In a much earlier post that I wrote concerning the song “A Forest” by The Cure *(Click here to read that post), I told the story of a girl I met via a Companions ad in the Toronto Star newspaper. In that story, I mentioned that we had dated for a short time while I was living in Toronto. I went on to say that the relationship never amounted to much and that the best thing I took from it was an excellent mix tape that she had made for me that affirmed my love, not for her but, instead, for The Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode and other titans of early 80s Alternative music.
Well, as it turned out, there was a tiny bit more to the story than I had indicated in that first post. A year or two later, that same girl enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. One day she dropped in unannounced at school while I was teaching in Courtice, Ontario. She asked to spend the day with me. Believe me when I tell you that no one was more surprised that I was when this young lady showed up out of the blue and asked for a second chance to see if we could be the couple she had envisioned in her mind. She asked if I wanted to come to Kingston and visit her for the upcoming weekend. She said that she had her own place and that we would be completely on our own. Even though that ship had sailed long ago for me, I agreed to go down to Kingston and see what might happen. Well, what happened was, in fact, confirmation that she was not the one for me. Nothing much had really changed from my perspective. I left after one day and came back home. In fact, my last image of her was in my rearview mirror of my car as I drove away. She was standing on the front step of the place she was renting, wearing nothing but a bathrobe, watching me leave. Oh yes, there was one other thing in the background of that image, something that remains the most vivid memory of that final image in my mind…the towering walls of Kingston Penitentiary.
Just as this young lady left me the memory of an excellent mixtape in our Toronto relationship, in our final meeting she gave me another gift which was an introduction to one of Canada’s more interesting cities (Kingston) and, in particular, to a building that has fascinated me ever since, called by most as simply K.P. or the Kingston Pen. I will get back to Kingston Pen in a moment. But first let me talk a bit about the city itself. There is just something about Kingston that has placed it at the forefront of my attention for a majority of my life since that first visit. First of all, being a history buff, I grew up with the knowledge that Kingston was once considered to be the capital city of Canada. I also knew that Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald was born there. It was to be many years and many revelations about residential schools before Sir John A. MacDonald’s legacy grew murky and controversial. For most of my life, he was Kingston’s most famous son. In the 1980s, I tuned in every Saturday night to Hockey Night in Canada and listened to commentator Don Cherry regale the nation about the many “good old Kingston boys” playing in the NHL, including the Leaf’s own, Dougie Gilmour. As the 1990s unfolded, a band known as The Tragically Hip began staking their claim to being Canada’s best band after honing their skills playing anywhere in Kingston and the surrounding area that would host them. In the 2000s, my connection with the Limestone City became more personal. By then I had met the woman who was to become my wife. When her mother turned 50 years of age, we travelled to Kingston to have a birthday dinner at The General Wolfe Inn on Wolfe Island. That dinner was also the first time any of us got to meet my sister-in-law’s new boyfriend who, in time, became my brother-in-law. They established roots just north of Kingston. Because they live where they do, we have had many opportunities to come to Kingston and area for family get-togethers, for medical treatments at Kingston’s impressive hospital when family members have been in need, for charity events such as Cancer Walks and Alzheimer’s Walks, for reunions at the Royal Military College, where my father-in-law once attended (and where he met Queen Elizabeth when she toured Kingston back in the day) and now, in a full circle moment, I have a niece who just enrolled in the Science programme at Queen’s University. Her dorm is located not too far from those same towering penitentiary walls that marked my first impression of the city such a long time ago.
And now, back to Kingston Pen. A few years ago, I finally got to cross off an item from my bucket list when I got to go on a guided tour of Kingston Penitentiary. For those who may not be aware, Kingston Penitentiary was one of Canada’s toughest and most notorious maximum security prisons for the whole of its existence. However, for a number of reasons, many of them economic, it was decided that Kingston Pen needed to cease operation so, in 2013, after 138 years of operation, Kingston Penitentiary shuddered its doors. Since then, it has remained in operation solely as a tourist site. It was at this site, as well as the museum that stands across the street (which used to be the Warden’s house and office) that I got to walk through the cell blocks, exercise yard, work shops and the gym where many of Canada’s most dangerous and infamous prisoners spent their days after being convicted of murders, robberies, violent assaults and much, much more. The building that I got to walk through was very quiet and still. The ghosts of those who did hard time there may have lingered behind the bars that still sealed off each cell but, beyond that, I felt extremely safe. There was nothing that ever gave me cause to fear while inside those walls. There was nothing those in charge of today’s tours could do to replicate the violent atmosphere of real prison life. I went on the tour and walked away a free man a couple of hours later. That’s not how it was for most who entered the walls of Kingston Pen. Before the tour started, we were warned that there would be no questions taken regarding some of the more recent notorious living offenders such as Paul Bernardo and Russell Williams. The reason given was because they were entitled to their privacy and still had human rights, regardless of the heinous nature of their crimes. But one thing the tour guides did agree to discuss, at least in a condensed, delicate manner, was the prison riot of 1971.
In 1971, a group of prisoners took six guards hostage and, in doing so, released the remaining inmates from their cells. The initial reasons given for abducting the guards was, according to the leaders of the riot, to draw attention to the inhumane conditions under which Kingston Penitentiary, along with most prisons across Canada, functioned. The prisoners complained about lack of access to psychiatric counselling, lack of prompt medical attention, lack of educational opportunities, too much time spent in isolation in their cells, overcrowding, violent treatment from the guards and so on. While the riot leaders met with prison officials to air their grievances, the remaining prisoners destroyed anything and everything they could get their hands on. A committee of lawyers and activists and reporters was assembled at the request of the prisoners, who did not feel as though they could get a fair shake from the Warden and Corrections Canada officials, including those in the federal government. The members of the committee got to meet directly with the prisoners. One or two even got to enter the riot zone and speak with the general population in person. The riot went on for several days. However, in anticipation of the siege ending badly for the captured guards, the Warden had requested the assistance of Canadian soldiers from a nearby training base. As the soldiers arrived to take up holding positions, the prisoners inside of Kingston Pen believed that an attack was imminent. The most violent and psychotic of the prisoners declared that the time for negotiating was over. A group of crazed prisoners attempted to attack and kill the six prison guards. However, those prison guards were being protected so that they could be used as bargaining chips when the riot was to eventually end and, as a result, the crazed mob was rebuffed in their attempt to get at them. From there, the mob turned their fury upon a group of men who are held in universal disdain in prisons everywhere in the world….child sex offenders and prison snitches. The mob entered the wing of the prison known as “Protective Custody” and hauled out every man they found there. The twelve or so prisoners were beaten and tortured in a frenzy of violence so sickening that it was even too much for a majority of the other prisoners to watch. Two of the twelve victims were murdered and the others all received multiple serious injuries. When the riot officially ended, all six guards were rescued. Their survival was due, in large part, to the action of a collection of inmates who reversed roles and acted as protectors of their guards. The prison, itself, was destroyed. Most of the inmates who had been housed there were transferred to a newer prison built nearby called Millhaven Maximum Security Penitentiary. A trial was held for those prisoners who had engaged in organizing and participating in the beatings. The trial was presided over by a judge named P.E.D. Baker.
This is where the dots begin to connect themselves together with regard to today’s song.
While Kingston, Ontario has become an important city in the course of my life, the fact remains that I am not from there and have never lived there. Kingston is not my home. But, it was the home for the members of The Tragically Hip. The Hip became a band known for, among many things, their penchant for historical fiction in their songwriting. Over the course of thirteen studio albums, Gord Downie and his bandmates became famous for using real places, people and historical events as springboards to musical storytelling. One of the very first instances of this was a song from their debut album Up To Here called “38 Years Old”. This song has its origins in a mass prison breakout that took place only a few short years after the 1971 riot at Kingston Pen. The mass escape happened at nearby Millhaven Penitentiary and involved several of the men who had participated in the beatings of those prisoners who had been in Protective Custody in K.P. But, as with many things that came to do with The Hip and their songwriting, the story of “38 Years Old” was intensely personal.
During the trial of those prisoners who participated in the beatings during the Kingston Pen riot of 1971, Judge Baker quickly realized that trying a dozen or so men at one time, combined with the testimony of hundreds of prisoners who witnessed the assaults, meant that the trial was probably going to be the longest and most complicated in Canadian history. It was also looking like it would be the costliest trial, too. Not wanting to be the one tagged with that legacy, Judge Baker arranged a series of meetings with the counsel for the prisoners and arranged a series of plea bargains. The prisoners, who had engaged in murder and vicious aggravated assaults, quickly leapt at the opportunity to receive sentences that ranged from three to five years to be served concurrently with their existing sentences. In the real world, many people reacted with anger that someone could commit murder and only be sentenced to a three year term. But justice and politics often work at loggerheads to each other. In the case of the Baker trial, it sure seemed as though political expediency and cost savings were the deciding factor in how justice was meted out.
So what does this have to do with The Tragically Hip and their song “38 Years Old”? As mentioned, the members of The Hip all grew up in the same shadow of the walls of Kingston Pen that so captured my attention way back when. They grew up in a city where many people earned their livelihood from the prison. They also grew up surrounded by the atmosphere that such an institution casts over the area in which it resides. But most of all, the history of Kingston Penitentiary affected the members of The Tragically Hip within the walls of their own homes. The band was comprised of singer Gord Downie, guitarist Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair, drummer Bobby Fay and lead guitarist Rob Baker. Rob Baker had an insider’s perspective on the world of prisons and of Kingston Pen, in particular, because his father was none other than Judge P.E.D. Baker, the very man who presided over the trial of the Kingston rioters. *(In fact, Rob Baker’s family has an impressive lineage. His grandfather, known as Col. Baker, was blinded in battle during WWI. Upon his return to Canada, he helped established an organization for blind people that we all now know as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind or the C.N.I.B. There is a Heritage Minute dedicated to Col. Baker that you can watch here).
Using the artistic license for which he became famous, Gord Downie took the events of the 1974 mass prison escape from Millhaven Penitentiary and created a story that emphasized the personal toll on families of incarceration.
“38 Years Old” by The Tragically Hip
12 men broke loose in 73
From Millhaven Maximum Security
And 12 pictures lined up across the front page
Seems the Mounties had a summertime war to wage
Well, the chief told the people they had nothing to fear
Said, “The last thing they want to do is hang around here”
They mostly came from towns with long French names
But one of the dozen was a hometown shame
Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall
Been one seat empty 18 years in all
Freezing slow time, away from the world
He′s 38 years old, never kissed a girl
He’s 38 years old, never kissed a girl
We were sitting round the table, heard the telephone ring
Father said he tell them if he saw anything
Heard the tap on my window in the middle of the night
Held back the curtain for my older brother Mike
See my sister got raped so a man got killed
Local boy went to prison, man′s buried on the hill
Folks went back to normal when they closed the case
They still stare at their shoes when they pass our place
My mother cried, “The horror has finally ceased”
He whispered, “Yeah, for the time being at least”
And over her shoulder on the squad car megaphone
Said, “Let’s go, Michael, son, we’re taking you home”
Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall
Been one seat empty 18 years in all
Freezing slow time, away from the world
He′s 38 years old, never kissed a girl
He′s 38 years old, never kissed a girl
He’s 38 years old, never kissed a girl.
“38 Years Old” was one of the first Hip songs to really gain popularity among its fan base. However, the song is also one of the songs the band played least in concerts over the course of their career. The reason for that is because Gord Downie did almost too good of a job creating that sympathetic portrait of a grieving family and the shame attached by association to those left behind because of the actions of the perpetrators. You see, in real life Gord Downie does, indeed, have an older brother whose name happens to be Mike….just as it is written in the lyrics of the song. The portrait of life portrayed by Downie struck such a realistic chord in listeners that many thought that his real life brother Mike was the same person mentioned in the song and, as such, he was now a convict and that Gord Downie’s sister (he does have one) was a victim of rape. None of that was true in real life. But as we all know, the journey from perception to new reality isn’t that vast in many cases. It certainly wasn’t when it came to “38 Years Old” and how the world began perceiving Gord Downie’s siblings…all because he wrote a song that rang too true and cut too close to the bone.
I originally discovered the city of Kingston because some femme fatale beckoned me forth. What I kept close to me from that weekend had nothing to do with her and everything to do with Kingston and its history and, in particular, the stunning and foreboding presence of Canada’s most dangerous prison. Getting to visit inside its walls was worth every penny I paid to get in. Funny how times have changed. It wasn’t all that long ago that the people inside those cells would have paid any price to get away, going so far as to start a riot, destroy the very building in which they were housed and kill those they felt violated the code of prison life. I keep returning to Kingston primarily because of family. The surviving members of The Tragically Hip still regard Kingston as home and their memories of the place remain filled with images of family and of friendships and of hometown life. “38 Years Old” is as close to an actual ode to their hometown as almost any song in their catalogue and yet, they did not play it during their three-hour final concert in 2016. Legacies are difficult things at times. Just think about people such as Sir John A. MacDonald and institutions like Kingston Pen, songs like “38 Years Old” and blondes who wanted to be the one for me long before I found that person who actually was the one for me. Now, because of my beloved, Kingston has that much more meaning and warmth for me. When I visit it is like I was always meant to be there after all.
The link to the video for the song “38 Years Old” by The Tragically Hip can be found here. The lyrics version, if you need it, can be found here.
The link to the official website for The Tragically Hip can be found here.
The link to a book which, for my money, is the definitive take on the 1971 Kingston Penitentiary riot can be found here. Murder On The Inside by reporter Katherine Fogarty comes highly recommended by yours truly.
The link to the official website for the Kingston Penitentiary Museum and Tour can be found here.
The link to the official website for the city of Kingston, Ontario can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained in this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2026 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com