The Historic Don Jail

The historic Don Jail has been transformed from a place of incarceration to one of innovation.

Located on the Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital campus, the more than 150-year-old structure is now the hospital’s administration building. This fresh purpose is the result of an adaptive re-use plan that has preserved and restored the heritage site.

When it first opened in 1864, people called the Don Jail a palace in comparison to other jails in Toronto. This was either a criticism or a compliment, depending on who you asked. Large windows offered natural light. An exercise yard provided a place for fresh air and recreation. And the facility was built on a working farm with the intent that prisoners could learn a skill or trade.

All of this was meant to fulfill the concept of a reform jail – a place where prisoners would leave better off than when they arrived. As a result, some prison reform advocates expected to see the jail’s population shrink, since reformed prisoners would not need to return.

Unfortunately, the Don Jail didn’t live up to these very high expectations. The jail was often overcrowded, and it could not address the issues of poverty, mental illness and alcohol addiction that plagued many of its prisoners. Still, the facility stood the test of time, operating until 1977.

Today, after more than a century as a jail and decades standing empty, the building serves a dual purpose as both the hospital administration building and as a place to learn about Toronto’s history.

The Don Jail is open to the public for self-guided tours during regular office hours: Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (excluding holidays).

Read on to learn more about the historic Don Jail and its restoration.

Location

Administration Building
Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital
1 Bridgepoint Drive

Directions

See maps, directions and parking for Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital.

The historic Don Jail is located in the Administration Building, southeast of the main hospital entrance.

Contact

Phone: 416-461-8252

Hours

Open for self-guided tours

Monday to Friday
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Composite of two photos next to each other. On the left is a view down a corridor of the historic Don Jail. There are six cells in a row and they have doors made of iron bars that are open. the second is a view inside one of the cells. The walls are brick painted white. A small, old metal cot takes up most of the space.

This group of six original cells has been preserved in the historic Don Jail. The narrow cells were designed for one person but sometimes held as many as three people at a time.

A palace for prisoners?

The Don Jail was described as a palace when it first opened, compared to other jails operating at that time.

Despite the grandeur of the building’s stone sculptures and iron work, the cells of the historic Don Jail were simple. They were just wide enough to fit a single cot since they were designed to hold a single prisoner and only to be used for sleeping overnight.

In reality, the jail was often overcrowded throughout its 113 years in operation. The number of cells and the capacity of the Don Jail continued to expand as it tried to keep up with Toronto’s explosive growth at the time.

Increasing capacity from 1864-1977

When it opened in 1864, the Don Jail had 184 cells.
In 1888, the jail was renovated to add 113 more cells, bringing the capacity to more than 300 prisoners.
By 1951, the jail’s capacity was 341 male prisoners and 40 female prisoners, but it was reported that the jail held more than 600 prisoners over night at times.
To ease the overcrowding, a new modern wing was added in 1958. It housed up to 276 additional prisoners.
Together, the modern wing of the Toronto Jail and the old Don Jail had a capacity of 550 prisoners.
The original Don Jail closed in 1977 after 113 years of use. The modern wing of the Jail continued to operate until 2013.

Restoration fact:

There are 10 preserved cells that have been restored and kept in their original state. These cells give visitors a sense of what the old Don Jail was like when it was in operation.

An illustration of a large building made of light gray brick with a green roof. In the foreground are trees of various shades of green.

Illustration of the Don Jail from 1910. Courtesy Toronto Public Library.

A snapshot of the Don Jail in 1873

At the time it opened in 1864, the Don Jail was the largest reform jail facility in North America.

Toronto’s population was more than 40,000 residents and growing quickly. By the early 1880s, the city’s population had surpassed 100,000.

A Globe and Mail newspaper article from 1874 provides statistics about the jail and offers a snapshot of its prisoners and the crimes they committed. This was nine years after the jail first opened and five years after Canada became a country.

In 1873:

The Jail saw 2,282 prisoners: 1,629 male and 653 female
135 prisoners, about 6 per cent, were under the age of 16
514 male prisoners, or 32 per cent, could not read or write well
None of the female prisoners could read or write well
More than half of male and female prisoners were jailed for “drunk and disorderly” behaviour

In these early days of the Don Jail, prisoner advocacy groups and even prison officials agreed that the Don Jail was not the right place for people who were homeless, experiencing mental illness or alcohol addiction.

The House of Refuge, (the earliest forerunner of Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital) was built next to the Don Jail to address some of these issues and provide shelter for individuals who could not work to provide for themselves.

However, just 10 years after it was built, the 100-bed House of Refuge was converted into a hospital to address yet another pressing issue of the time: infectious diseases. The shelter served as an isolation hospital for people infected with smallpox and diphtheria.

Toronto did have other shelter options, primarily run by charitable organizations and churches.

An architectural illustration of details on the construction of stone pillars and cornices on the exterior of the front entrance of the Don Jail. The drawing is in watercolour and shows gray stone, black and red brick.

Original architectural drawing showing details of the ornate stone and brick work on the front entrance of the Don Jail, c.1858. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 1508, Item 34.

Who designed the Don Jail?

William Thomas, the architect of the historic Don Jail, was born in England and migrated to Canada in the 1840s.

He designed many important pre-confederation buildings that are still standing today and became one of Canada’s most respected early architects.

For the Don Jail, Thomas incorporated a heating and cooling system that consisted of a network of ducts and flues and two ventilation towers. This was an innovative design for the time.

Thomas’s other well-known Ontario landmarks include churches, public buildings and even a monument.

St. Michael’s Cathedral, at Bond and Shuter Streets, opened in 1848 as the largest church in Toronto. The cathedral is built in the English Gothic Revival style.
St. Lawrence Hall, at King and Jarvis Streets, was built in 1850 as a meeting place. When it opened, it was the largest concert venue in Toronto, with a 1,000-seat amphitheatre. The hall is still used for events today.
St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Hamilton was completed in 1857. Designed in the English Gothic Revival style, it’s the only church in Ontario to have a stone spire.
Brock’s Monument, completed in 1856, is a 56-metre column in Queenston Ontario that commemorates Sir Isaac Brock, who defended Upper Canada against American invasion in the war of 1812.

Thomas designed more than 100 buildings in Canada during his career. The Don Jail was his last project before his death in 1860.

Night image of the Don Jail around 1952. The building is lit up by floodlights. It is four storeys and made of light brick. The bars on the windows are visible. There are a few cars in front of the building. The photo is in black and white.

The Don Jail as it would have appeared the night that the Boyd Gang escaped in 1952. City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 145216

The Don Jail in the mid-20th century

Throughout its operation, many prisoners in the Don Jail had committed minor offences such as drunk and disorderly behaviour. However, the jail had always held inmates accused of serious crimes as well.

By the 1940s, this included gangs such as the Polka Dot Gang and the Boyd Gang. In 1952, after two successful escapes from the jail by members of the notorious bank-robbing Boyd Gang, a Royal Commission investigated the state of the Don Jail. The report was a revealing look at the operations of the jail.

The capacity of the Don Jail was 341 male prisoners and 40 female prisoners.
The actual number of prisoners in the jail overnight was sometimes more than 600. The cells — which were designed for just one prisoner to sleep in at night — now held as many as three prisoners.
The jail was short-staffed, particularly on night shifts, when there were sometimes as few as five guards overseeing 500 to 600 prisoners. The Royal Commission Report recommended a minimum of 22 guards on overnight shifts.
The turnover was high, with as many as 169 new prisoners in one day.
The morale of the staff was low. The guards’ salaries and benefits had not kept up with compensation of guards in newer jails.
An estimated 20,000 prisoners passed through the Don Jail over the course of a year, which was one third of all prisoners in Ontario.

The population of Toronto had grown to approximately one million residents by 1952 and the Don Jail was no longer able to meet the needs of the city.

The report of the Royal Commission recommended the construction of a new wing that would be attached to the jail and have modern security features and larger cells. The new wing opened in 1958, six years after the Royal Commission Report.

A view of the Don Jail cell block during renovation, looking down the length of a corridor. There are arched door frames on the right side and windows on the left side. The hall is under construction and unfinished.

The arched cell doorways were preserved during the restoration of the historic Don Jail, while the walls between cells were removed to create open floor plans.

Restoring the Old Don Jail

This building was designed as a kind of palace – they just happened to put a jail in it.
Paul Sapounzi, Lead Architect, Ventin Group Architects, one of two heritage architectural firms involved in the restoration of the Don Jail

The historic Don Jail sat empty for decades before it was purchased by Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital (formerly Bridgepoint Active Healthcare).

The work to restore the Don Jail was undertaken by experts in heritage architecture projects.

The restoration included:

Gently cleaning the exterior of more than 100 years of accumulated soot and dirt
Preserving the original iron work, stone carvings, wood and stone floors, and other interior finishes whenever possible
Restoring the skylight and glass floor in the main rotunda
Removing the bars on most of the windows
Preserving the arched facades on each row of cells while removing the partition walls between cells to create an open floor plan
Adding an elevator and infrastructure for hospital technology and lighting

Features and finishes of the building that could not be preserved or restored were photographed and documented and these records have been archived for future reference.

A composite of two black and white images from 1951 next to each other. On the left is an image of four men walking down a short set of stone stairs outside. Two men in front are handcuffed to each other. They are wearing casual, workmen’s clothes and shoes. Two men behind them are wearing suits. There is a fence with barbed wire in the background. The image on the right is two men in overalls standing in front of a window inside the Don Jail.

At left, Edwin Boyd is escorted into the Don Jail in 1952. City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 148365.

At right, two maintenance workers repair the window that the Boyd Gang escaped from in 1952. City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 148380.

The twice-escaped notorious Boyd Gang

Edwin Alonzo Boyd was a veteran of the Second World War who struggled to adapt to civilian life and find suitable work when he returned.

From September 1949 to October 1951, he went on a spree of bank robberies, pulling at least six heists. From his first robbery alone, he escaped with $3,000 (which is equivalent to about $36,600 in 2025).

In fall of 1951, Boyd was caught on his seventh attempted robbery and put in the Don Jail where he met two other bank robbers, Leonard Jackson and William Jackson (no relation). The trio soon started planning their escape. They gradually sawed through the iron bars on a window using a hack saw that was smuggled into the jail inside Leonard Jackson’s wooden left foot. On November 4, 1951, the group finally sawed through the bars and used a rope made out of bed sheets to rappel from the window. From there, they climbed over the wall of the jail’s exercise yard.

After their escape, the group started robbing banks together with another associate, Steve Suchan. On March 6, 1952, Suchan and Leonard Jackson were stopped by police on route to a robbery. A gun fight ensued, killing two detectives. The incident set off a major manhunt and all four men were soon recaptured and sent back to the Don Jail.

On September 8, 1952, the gang managed to escape again. According to Boyd, William Jackson’s lawyer had smuggled them a hacksaw blade, a piece of steel and a file. Boyd made a key that allowed them to unlock their cells, work through several iron window bars with the hacksaw and eventually slip out under cover of darkness. Eight days later, the gang was found in a North York barn.

Suchan and Leonard Jackson were charged with murder of the two police officers and hanged on December 16, 1952. Boyd served fourteen years of a life sentence under strict supervision at Kingston Penitentiary. He was granted parole in 1966. When he got out of prison, he lived under an assumed name for his remaining years and died on May 17, 2002.

Historic news coverage: Listen to a radio news report on the capture of the Boyd gang from the CBC archives.