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Burwash Industrial Farm

On Sunday, August 6, 2006 at 2 p.m., the Ontario Heritage Trust, the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and the Burwash Alumni Committee unveiled a provincial plaque commemorating Burwash Industrial Farm in the Village of Burwash during the Burwash Alumni Picnic.

The bilingual plaque reads as follows:

BURWASH INDUSTRIAL FARM

    Burwash Industrial Farm was established in 1914 based on the revolutionary premise that low-risk inmates would benefit from the exercise and skills learned while working outdoors at self-supporting institutions. Burwash Industrial Farm accommodated between 180 and 820 minimum and medium security offenders with sentences of three months to two years less a day. Over time, it grew to occupy 35,000 acres owned and 101,000 acres leased, housing three permanent camp sites, several temporary ones, and a town of prison staff families with a population of 600 to 1,000 people. Prison inmates provided labour to build the entire community and ran an extensive mixed farm, a tailor shop, and a prosperous logging operation. Burwash Industrial Farm was one of the largest reform institutions in 20th-century Ontario. It closed in 1975 because of changes in correctional practices.

FERME INDUSTRIELLE BURWASH

    La Ferme industrielle Burwash fut fondée en 1914. Le principe qui la gouvernait reposait sur le concept révolutionnaire selon lequel les détenus à faibles risques profiteraient de l’exercice et des compétences acquises lors de l’accomplissement de travaux en plein air dans des établissements autonomes. La ferme industrielle Burwash hébergea entre 180 et 820 contrevenants présentant un risque minimum à moyen et condamnés à des peines allant de trois mois à deux ans, moins un jour. Au fil du temps, elle s’agrandit jusqu’à occuper un terrain d’une superficie de 35 000 acres, en tant que propriétaire, et de 101 000 acres, en tant que locataire. Elle incluait trois camps permanents et plusieurs camps temporaires, ainsi qu’une ville destinée à accueillir les familles du personnel pénitentiaire, soit une population de 600 à 1 000 personnes. Les détenus construisirent toute la collectivité et exploitèrent une vaste ferme à vocation mixte, un magasin de confection, ainsi qu’une exploitation forestière prospère. La Ferme industrielle Burwash fut l’un des plus grands établissements correctionnel réformatoires en Ontario, au 20ème siècle. Elle ferma ses portes en 1975 suite à l’adoption de nouvelles pratiques correctionnelles.

Historical background

Burwash is the name of both the industrial farm that operated as an Ontario reform institution from 1914 to 1975 and the name of the town that supported it. They were located 40 km south of Sudbury in the unorganized townships of Laura, Secord, Servos and Burwash in Sudbury District. The institution closed in 19751 and, within a decade, the town had disappeared.2 All of the buildings were demolished when the 14,164-hectare (35,000-acre) site became a Department of National Defence training ground in the mid-1980s.3

Burwash Industrial Farm was the largest long-standing reformatory farm in the Ontario correctional system. At the time it was established, the institution reflected up-to-date penal philosophy, which recognized the former practice of “building [single fortified] prisons for all classes of inmates” as being “both expensive and unscientific.” Early 20th-century ideas advocated classifying prisoners into different security types that acknowledged low-risk prisoners would benefit from activity and required little restraint.4 This new approach was adopted in Ontario on the recommendation of a committee appointed to review the subject in 1907. According to a 1930s account: “The findings of that Committee were presented in 1908 and directly resulted in the greatest major advance in Canadian Prison history to date.”5 Ontario opened its first prison farm in Fort William in 1911 to accommodate prisoners from the north so they would not have to be shipped south for incarceration. Additional farms were opened at Langstaff and Concord in 1912, then Mimico in 1913. Much larger farms were then undertaken in association with the Agricultural College in Guelph in 1913, and in northern Ontario at Burwash in 1914.6 Before Burwash could open, the Legislature passed a statute permitting the Lieutenant-Governor in Council to “make regulations for the management and discipline of an industrial farm in a Provisional Judicial District” which sanctioned its inmates to work beyond the geographic limits of the institution under provincial supervision.7 By the time Ontario closed the doors of its former Central Prison in Toronto in 1915, everyone was convinced it was on the right course:

    It has been proved by past experience that a Prison farm is a benefit both to the community and to the prisoners, because on the one hand the farm is self-supporting and the community is relieved of the burden of supporting the prisoners, and on the other hand the prisoner is placed practically on parole, and is given healthful and invigorating employment, as well as mental advantages. All of which are impossible under the old methods.8

The mission of these new industrial farms was to act as model farms to develop agricultural techniques in their geographic areas, to provide the food required by their own reformatories and to reduce provincial costs by providing a supplementary supply of food for other provincial institutions.9

Initially, Burwash housed 200 to 400 prisoners with sentences ranging from three months to two years less a day. They worked without armed guards in an outdoor farm-like environment secure in the belief that “when they come out, strengthened in body and mind by good food and hard work, they will have a different outlook on life and endeavour to do better in the future.”10 The first prisoners at Burwash lived in tents while they cleared the three-by-seven-mile valley that was to become the institution’s initial site, then built a drainage ditch and seven buildings to create the first compound. “All of this work has been done by prison labour, by men who would have otherwise been sitting behind iron bars or engaged in comparatively unproductive occupations,” proclaimed a local newspaper.11 Not all Burwash prisoners appear to have been so enthusiastic — several expressed a preference to finish their sentences at institutions with less demanding schedules.12

Until 1931, prisoners in Ontario were assigned to provincial reformatories on a geographic basis. This changed between 1932 and 1934 when officials recognized it was better to group inmates by custodial requirement “from complete trust to close and constant supervision,”13 and placed inmates accordingly. By 1934, “the most dangerous prisoners in our reformative institutions” were segregated at Burwash. These were “individuals who quite evidently have failed to respond to the treatment given,”14 and the result was construction of secure new cell blocks at the institution in addition to recreational and trades instruction facilities that had also become departmental policy. Burwash Industrial Farm was expanded by prison labour “directed by skilled mechanics of the various trades under the supervision of the Provincial Secretary’s Department”15 in the mid-1930s. By 1939, the institution housed 720 prisoners. It also ran a farm, a lumbering operation including a mill and a tailor shop that provided clothing for prisoners and shirts for prison officers. It boasted its own 20-bed hospital, assembly hall, newspaper, entertainment and sports activities and had annexed Ontario’s nearby Monteith Experimental Farm as a supplementary site.16

The Ontario Plan, which rationalized correctional facilities after the Second World War, further stressed the importance of rehabilitation. During this period, most provincial reformatories were redeployed with specific treatment and educational objectives in mind. Burwash, on the other hand, assumed the slack:

    At the Industrial Farm, Burwash, the inmate body is made up entirely of recidivists, many of whom have long criminal records. The prognosis for rehabilitation is, therefore, less hopeful than for many of the inmates than it is for younger, less sophisticated prisoners at other institutions.17

Despite the fact that new educational initiatives were added to its program, the primary value of Burwash to Ontario continued to be its self-sufficiency, its assistance in provincial land management in a remote area, and especially its isolation. By 1954, Burwash Industrial Farm contained “the greatest area of any reform institution in the province — 35,000 acres owned and 101,000 acres leased,” and consisted of three separate permanent and two temporary camps housing a population of 784 adult minimum and medium security inmates.18

Neither this role nor the general population of the institution changed in the period between 1954 and 1974 even though correctional ideas shifted to favour parole, probation and the use of smaller facilities.19 When it was identified for closure in 1974, Burwash was the largest industrial farm and the second-largest reformatory in the Ontario correctional system. Far from being an asset,

    The Ministry considers the maintenance of close and regular contact by the offender with his family to be a major factor in rehabilitation and at Burwash such contact is almost impossible. The institution was originally intended to serve those sentenced in Northern Ontario, but today over 90 percent of its population have their homes in Southern Ontario. As a result, the majority of Burwash inmates are rarely if ever able to visit them because of the costs of transportation.20

After the institution was closed, the staff community that had grown to support it ended too. Initially named Burwash, then Farmlands (1918), Burwash Station (1927) and again Burwash (1974),21 the town was significantly expanded in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as staff housing and public buildings were constructed by prison labour.22 “There were about 175 houses on the property, with about 600 to 1,000 people living there at any given time.” Children of prison staff grew up on the town site: “We lived in a place where there was no poverty, there were no rich people, there was no class structure ... You knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody.” The town had its own post office, church, school, recreation hall, sports teams, barbershop and grocery store. As one former resident recalls, “The only thing the community didn’t have ... was a clothing store.”23 A strong community spirit developed, fed by the town’s geographic isolation. This spirit, sustained by memories of life in a unique environment, is the lasting legacy of Burwash.

The Ontario Heritage Trust gratefully acknowledges the research of Margaret Carter in preparing this paper.

© Ontario Heritage Trust, 2006

1 “Stop Press”, in Ontario, Ministry of Correctional Services, Newsletter, Vol. 2 No.4, August 1974, p. 5.

2 Floreen Ellen Carter, Place Names of Ontario (London: Phelps Publishing Company, 1984), p. 171 records the last date this appeared as a postal address as 1983.

3 http://groups.msn.com/burwashmemories.

4 Alfred Hopkins, Prisons and Prison Building (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co. 1930), pp. 7-8.

5 See “Report of the Deputy Provincial Secretary,” in Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending March 1934 (Toronto: King‘s Printer, 1935), Sessional Paper No. 18, p. 6.

6 “Report of the Deputy Provincial Secretary,” in Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending March 1934 (Toronto: King‘s Printer, 1935), Sessional Paper No. 18, pp. 7-8.

7 Chapter 52, “An Act to amend The Industrial Farms Act,” 1 May 1914, in Ontario, Statutes of the Province of Ontario [1914] passed in the Fourth Year of the Reign of His Majesty King George V, being the Third Session of the Thirteenth Legislature of Ontario (Toronto: King’s Printer, 1915), pp. 262-264.

8 “Prison Farm for Sudbury and District,” in The Sudbury Star, 12 September 1914, p. 5.

9 “Ranching has Great Future in District,” The Sudbury Star, 17 March 1917, p. 10.

10 “Burwash Industrial Farm a Wonderful Institution,” in The Sudbury Star, 20 March 1915, p. 2.

11 “Burwash Industrial Farm a Wonderful Institution,” in The Sudbury Star, 20 March 1915, p. 2.

12 “Burwash Not Popular with Escaped Men,” The Sudbury Star, 14 June 1919, p. 6.

13 “Report of the Deputy Provincial Secretary,” in Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending March 1934 (Toronto: King‘s Printer, 1935), Sessional Paper No. 18, p. 8.

14 See “Report of the Deputy Provincial Secretary,” in Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending March 1934 (Toronto: King‘s Printer, 1935), Sessional Paper No. 18, p. 13 and p. 14 respectively.

15 “Architect’s Report,” in Ontario, Department of Public Works, Annual Report for the Fiscal Year ending 31st March 1937 (Toronto: King’s Printer, 1938), Sessional Paper No. 3, p. 13.

16 “Industrial Farm, Burwash,” in Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending March 1939 (Toronto: King’s Printer, 1940), pp. 21-22.

17 “Report of the Deputy Minister of Reform Institutions,” in Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending 31st March 1950 (Toronto: King’s Printer, 1951), S.P. No. 8, p. 9.

18 Ontario, Report of the Select Committee Appointed by the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario to Study and Report upon Problems of Delinquent Individuals and Custodial Questions and the Place of Reform Institutions Therein (Toronto: 8 March 1954), pp. 123-126, and Table 1, “Movement of Population in Ontario Reformatories and Industrial Farms,” in Ontario Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report for the fiscal year ending 31st March 1953 (Toronto: Queen’s Printer, 1954), S.P. No. 8, p. 10. This figure does not include inmates on the Monteith Farm site.

19 “Report of the Deputy Minister,” Ontario, Department of Correctional Services, Annual Report for 1968-69 [entitled The Ontario Plan in Corrections] (Toronto: Queen’s Printer, 1970), pp. 10-11.

20 “Stop Press”, in Ontario, Ministry of Correctional Services, Newsletter, Vol. 2 No. 4, August 1974, p. 5.

21 Floreen Ellen Carter, Place Names of Ontario (London: Phelps Publishing Company, 1984), p. 171.

22 “Industrial Farm, Burwash,” Ontario, Department of Reform Institutions, Annual Report of Reformatories and Prisons for 1939, S.P. 53, p. 21, for 1948, S.P. 18, p. 43, and Ontario, Report of the Select Committee Appointed by the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario to Study and Report upon Problems of Delinquent Individuals and Custodial Questions and the Place of Reform Institutions Therein (Toronto: 8 March 1954), p. 126.

23 Bob Vaillancourt, “Memories of Prison Farm Life”, The Sudbury Star, 4 August 2003, from this website.