Speaker 1: Campsite Media.
Speaker 2: A warning.
Speaker 3: This episode contains graphic content that may be difficult for
Speaker 3: some listeners.
Speaker 4: Please listen with care.
Speaker 2: After Roger had spelt the word pigs out of jelly beans,
Speaker 2: the prison guards had deemed him too menacing to be
Speaker 2: trusted with candy, so they confiscated the beans, which we
Speaker 2: can all agree is very pig like behavior, leaving Roger
Speaker 2: with a spirit full of four letter words, but with
Speaker 2: no tools with which to express them. He was left
Speaker 2: in a cell with a new epiphany pulsing in his head,
Speaker 2: a discovery about himself that he had something to say.
Speaker 2: Before this, it had never really crossed his mind to
Speaker 2: put anything to paper. But when he would arrange these
Speaker 2: words made out of jelly beans, look at the colorful, simple,
Speaker 2: slanderous words, and think I made this word, and he
Speaker 2: could see a new world of possibility.
Speaker 1: I felt I never finished Grade.
Speaker 2: Sixth Writing a word or a sentence is something most
Speaker 2: of us take for granted, but for Roger it was
Speaker 2: a revelation. So down in solitary confinement, he thought, if
Speaker 2: I learned to write the characters of the words that
Speaker 2: I think or speak, I'm free to make whatever words
Speaker 2: I want. Being free in any way was very attractive
Speaker 2: to Roger. He couldn't go anywhere, or do anything, or
Speaker 2: eat what he wanted or see anyone he wanted. But
Speaker 2: if he could write, he could write anything he wished.
Speaker 2: But how and with what. It was then that he
Speaker 2: remembered the Kingston Penitentiary had a school teacher based in
Speaker 2: the library, so he sent out a verbal quest for
Speaker 2: pencils and paper. His request made it all the way
Speaker 2: to the teacher, and that same day this teacher made
Speaker 2: the trip all the way down to the hole to
Speaker 2: deliver the supplies to Roger himself.
Speaker 5: He get you three striggers, three pencil a dictionary, and ASSAURIUSM.
Speaker 2: Roger was hardly allowed anything in the hole, so when
Speaker 2: he was handed these novel objects and allowed these objects,
Speaker 2: he almost couldn't believe it. So he figured might as
Speaker 2: well get started before they changed their mind. Roger had
Speaker 2: read books in the past, but when it came to
Speaker 2: his own writing, it was almost as if he was
Speaker 2: inventing it for himself, because what he was saying was
Speaker 2: more urgent than the logistics of spelling and punctuation. He
Speaker 2: had feelings that he needed to let out, and then
Speaker 2: I grant.
Speaker 3: Out a pencil and had so much house failed. The
Speaker 3: intention to meet a pencil rob not easy. I opened
Speaker 3: a sprigger, I went to write the paper, tore the
Speaker 3: nip girl. I sharpened the dip of the confeefore, and
Speaker 3: then turned on the patient. I went to write, and
Speaker 3: it was like frustration.
Speaker 1: I was choked up. All these massive words don't come out.
Speaker 1: They didn't know I was filled.
Speaker 2: He'd spell phonetically or in a made up way for
Speaker 2: himself to decipher. Later, as he tried to keep up
Speaker 2: with a stream of consciousness, which was flowing like a river,
Speaker 2: he'd write about the past, about the scenes and people
Speaker 2: he'd encountered, the moments in his life that he'd revisit
Speaker 2: the most in his imagination. He was driven by the
Speaker 2: need to get these stories out of his head and
Speaker 2: into the physical realm in whatever way he could, at
Speaker 2: whatever pace it took.
Speaker 5: So I stole in the dictionary and Sidorus, and I
Speaker 5: found words, and I started writing.
Speaker 1: And it take me six hours to fill one felt paid.
Speaker 2: He'd spend hours with the dictionary to see if he
Speaker 2: could find the words he meant and learn how to
Speaker 2: spell them correctly. Then he'd flip to the thesaurus and
Speaker 2: find better words, tune tunnels, catacombs. The limbo room was
Speaker 2: in the catacombs underneath the reformatory. There's such pleasure in
Speaker 2: finding the right words. Each addition to the vocabulary brought
Speaker 2: with it a new permission to feel.
Speaker 1: But for the first time my life had felt good.
Speaker 3: All these words are born of my own aurus to
Speaker 3: the word anger and fell definition.
Speaker 2: Anger an intense emotional state of displeasure. See also indignation, rage, bitterness,
Speaker 2: higher contempt. Whole months would pass where it seemed like
Speaker 2: his pencil never stopped.
Speaker 1: Moving, I wrote, wrote.
Speaker 2: As the words plotted their way onto the page. He
Speaker 2: felt like he could unburden himself, one word at a time,
Speaker 2: of this mountain of strife and trauma.
Speaker 4: And I really think that was the beginning of where
Speaker 4: he learned, Wow, write a few things down here and whatnot.
Speaker 4: And I think that's really what set him off onto
Speaker 4: his writing journey.
Speaker 2: Around this time, Roger's sister Sue started to receive letters
Speaker 2: more regularly from her dear brother, where he'd explain this
Speaker 2: new writing kick he'd been on in the most Roger
Speaker 2: way possible.
Speaker 4: He said, my fingers are cramping and just writing and
Speaker 4: writing and writing and writing. You know, I'm doing a
Speaker 4: lot of writing whatnot. And I said, super, you know
Speaker 4: this is good. This is good.
Speaker 2: Sue had always been very encouraging of her brother through everything,
Speaker 2: and this was no different.
Speaker 4: I thought, it's not going to do him any harm,
Speaker 4: and hopefully you'll learn from some of what he's putting down.
Speaker 4: Sometimes when we have to face our thoughts, it's better
Speaker 4: for us and we see it more. It's nothing like
Speaker 4: putting it on paper and having a good look at it.
Speaker 2: When she received handwritten letters from Roger, she'd slide it
Speaker 2: from the envelope and would study the page fascinated.
Speaker 4: It was just so interesting. He was writing as it sounded,
Speaker 4: you know, the spelling some of it. You had to
Speaker 4: almost figure it out.
Speaker 2: With each letter. It became more obvious that writing was
Speaker 2: no passing fad in Roger's life. He was a writer.
Speaker 4: He was just like a train down the track. He
Speaker 4: was just on a roll. So I guess he had
Speaker 4: a lot to say.
Speaker 2: From iHeart podcasts and campsite media. I'm Sam Mullens and
Speaker 2: this is Go Boy episode five under new management. So
Speaker 2: the jellybeans were given to Roger on Christmas nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: and we need to fast forward to nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: eight years later. Usually when you're writing a podcast about someone,
Speaker 2: this is a good example of the type of time
Speaker 2: jump where you just skip those eight years, nice and clean.
Speaker 2: But this is the story of Go Boy, where too
Speaker 2: much happens all the time, so we'll skim jellybeans were
Speaker 2: in sixty three, he starts writing. After twenty three months
Speaker 2: in the hole. He sent to Manitoba, then to Quebec,
Speaker 2: where he was finally paroled. He got a job laying brick,
Speaker 2: but then he was arrested for conspiring to rob a brinkstruck,
Speaker 2: which is how in late nineteen seventy he found himself
Speaker 2: for the first time in many years, entering through the
Speaker 2: gates of the Kingston penn back where he started. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that gets us from sixty three to seventy one.
Speaker 2: But the most important thing for our story is that
Speaker 2: throughout these seven plus years, while Nixon was being elected
Speaker 2: and the Beatles were making Sergeant Pepper's and Neil Armstrong
Speaker 2: was walking on the moon, Roger was writing and revising
Speaker 2: and rewriting, and his pages would always come with him
Speaker 2: from place to place, and by nineteen seventy one he
Speaker 2: do a lot of writing, not in his cell but
Speaker 2: in the KP library, where he was finally bold enough
Speaker 2: to share his work with someone other than his sister.
Speaker 1: I went to work in the library there, Kitty, with
Speaker 1: all of my scrippers and the library and encourage to
Speaker 1: be the writing book.
Speaker 2: Roger had been sharing some of the sections of his
Speaker 2: manuscript with the librarian and he told Roger that he
Speaker 2: thought he really had something here.
Speaker 4: And then that's when he started talking, I probably got
Speaker 4: enough material here for a book, And I say why not?
Speaker 4: Why not? And he was really excited about telling me
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 2: In the letters, Roger's manuscript had ballooned to eighteen hundred pages,
Speaker 2: and those pages had become the center of his whole life.
Speaker 2: He'd spent so many years looking over his shoulder, being
Speaker 2: hyper vigilant about his surroundings just to survive. But when
Speaker 2: he started thinking about a book, all the preoccupations of
Speaker 2: the institution kind of faded into the background. The project
Speaker 2: of his book was all encompassing, and there's almost no
Speaker 2: room anymore for the day to day dramas of the prison.
Speaker 2: But whether he was paying attention or not, there was
Speaker 2: something in the air at the Kingston Penitentiary in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one. A pressure was building in the institution and
Speaker 2: things were about to explode. The prisoners had learned of
Speaker 2: a new super maximum security prison that was being built
Speaker 2: eighteen miles away, called Millhaven, or ironically the Haven for short,
Speaker 2: and it was almost ready to open. The Kingston pen
Speaker 2: was nearly a century and a half old by this point,
Speaker 2: so the powers that be began pouring millions of dollars
Speaker 2: into the prison that would one day replace it, and
Speaker 2: everything the prisoners heard about Milhaven's design filled them with dread.
Speaker 2: It was going to have more gun towers than the pen,
Speaker 2: more razor wire, and a fleet of attack dogs. There
Speaker 2: were rumors that every cell would have a solid steel
Speaker 2: door instead of bars, every cell would have security cameras,
Speaker 2: and every room would be bugged by state of the
Speaker 2: art voice recorders, listening in on and recording their every move,
Speaker 2: their every conversation. And this was all on top of
Speaker 2: the changes they'd been observing at KP. Everything was more
Speaker 2: locked down than ever, The food was worse, the punishment
Speaker 2: more severe, and the mutual respect that was once possible
Speaker 2: between guard and inmate was a dinosaur of an earlier era.
Speaker 2: Roger was less invested in all this angst than an
Speaker 2: earlier version of him might have been, because he had hope,
Speaker 2: hope that his lawyer would help him overturn this wrongful
Speaker 2: conviction in appeal, and he had hope in the form
Speaker 2: of his eighteen hundred pages, that one day he'd be
Speaker 2: able to do something with him. He had convinced himself
Speaker 2: that these pages had value. But on April fourteenth, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one, the Kingston Penitentiary was about to become an
Speaker 2: all time bad place to have anything of value. On
Speaker 2: April fourteenth, the first dozen inmates were moved from KP
Speaker 2: to Millhaven, so the abstract boogeyman of this new prison
Speaker 2: had finally arrived at their door. Tension was at an
Speaker 2: all time high. Prisoners had been speaking in hushed tones
Speaker 2: for months about what they could do to stop this
Speaker 2: transfer to Millhaven from happening, and they've been brainstorming about
Speaker 2: what sort of power play they could make to fight
Speaker 2: against it. But when you pulled the threads apart to
Speaker 2: trace what triggered the most horrifying thing to ever happen
Speaker 2: in the Canadian prison. It started with a dress code
Speaker 2: violation when we went on our tour of the Kingston Penitentiary.
Speaker 2: In this one part, we walked into what looks like
Speaker 2: a big gymnasium like you'd see in high school, and
Speaker 2: to get in, there's a couple checkpoints with steel gates
Speaker 2: in this little bottleneck just before you walk in and
Speaker 2: through this bottleneck is where the inmates would pass into
Speaker 2: the gym where they would have their recreation time. They
Speaker 2: could exercise, play a game, or often they would just
Speaker 2: watch TV. I think they were a hockey game.
Speaker 3: And then it was basically somewhere on this segment when
Speaker 3: the riot started.
Speaker 2: To keep the groups manageable, the guards would bring inmates
Speaker 2: through the checkpoints to the recreation area only twenty men
Speaker 2: at a time. So it was in one of these
Speaker 2: checkpoints with steel bars all around them that guard named Decker,
Speaker 2: when glancing at an inmate named Knight, spotted a dress
Speaker 2: code violation. KP had a strict dress code that was
Speaker 2: enforced at all times that included, among other things, having
Speaker 2: your shirt tucked in. We stood in the exact corridor
Speaker 2: where this happened. I would imagine it was a long
Speaker 2: partner wow a guard stand Tucker shirt at tuck that
Speaker 2: shirt in. The guard barked at the exact wrong inmate
Speaker 2: on the exact wrong days. Everyone in the checkpoint waited
Speaker 2: to see what Billy Knight would do, to see how
Speaker 2: this most respect of inmates would react to the upity
Speaker 2: tone of this cocky twenty seven year old guard. They
Speaker 2: didn't need to wait for very long, because Knight swung
Speaker 2: a sudden punch to the stomach of Decker and yelled,
Speaker 2: that's the last order you're going to give. Within seconds,
Speaker 2: the inmates had the keys to get through the next barrier,
Speaker 2: where they overpowered the next guard and moved into the area.
Speaker 2: After that, they were making a break for the center Dawn,
Speaker 2: the effect of control center of the whole institution, where
Speaker 2: they knew that if they got control of that, the
Speaker 2: prison would be theirs. While all this was going on,
Speaker 2: Roger was sitting quietly in his cell when he heard
Speaker 2: the sound of yelling in the distance. Where were you
Speaker 2: on April fourteenth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 6: I was where I wish I wouldn't have been. I
Speaker 6: was in Kingston Penitentiary just before it exploded.
Speaker 2: D Roger will take a break and then we'll come
Speaker 2: back and find out what did happen when somebody yelled bingo.
Speaker 2: In short order, the rogue inmates had captured six of
Speaker 2: the guards, taken them prisoner, and locked them up in
Speaker 2: their cell block. Word deliriously spread that the inmates had
Speaker 2: taken control of the place, as they said about the
Speaker 2: urgent task of freeing every inmate in the pen. Some
Speaker 2: cell blocks were a cinch to unlock and required just
Speaker 2: a spinning of the wheel to open, while with others
Speaker 2: they needed to smash their way in by ripping the
Speaker 2: bars clean out of the wall. One by one, the
Speaker 2: men ran to the dome, whooping and hollering, disbelieving this
Speaker 2: sudden twist in their Wednesday evening. What were they going
Speaker 2: to do with this unlikeliest of opportunities. Well, I'll tell
Speaker 2: you the first thing they did. They smashed the shit
Speaker 2: of the Kingston Penitentiary bell. Today you can go and
Speaker 2: see what remains of it at the Canadian Penitentiary Museum.
Speaker 2: During the riot, this was such a focal point of
Speaker 2: all their aggression and all their like let's take it
Speaker 2: out on the bell. One can't help but think of
Speaker 2: the scene with the printer from Office Space one of
Speaker 2: their things was not just take it, not just to
Speaker 2: assemble it, but to smash it as many pieces as
Speaker 2: they can. So it's amazing they actually have it here
Speaker 2: with the actual pieces. Wow. There's a newspaper headline framed
Speaker 2: above the bell remains that reads, Jangling Bell tolls no longer.
Speaker 2: And the destruction of the bell was just the beginning.
Speaker 2: The prisoners have done some damage. They've smashed the three
Speaker 2: chapels and destroyed most of the locking systems throughout the
Speaker 2: cell block they occupy. They broke windows, kicked in doors,
Speaker 2: and broke every breakable thing there was. It was complete mayhem,
Speaker 2: complete disorder. And after the initial wave of joy and
Speaker 2: anger and revel on the physical, it was time to
Speaker 2: think about what their next move was. With the six
Speaker 2: guards in their custody, they knew they had a very
Speaker 2: strong bargaining tip. If the inmates really were planning on
Speaker 2: getting some sort of message out to the public about
Speaker 2: how poorly they were being treated at the hands of
Speaker 2: the Canadian penal system and how afraid they were about
Speaker 2: what waited for them in Millhaven, they had a horrified
Speaker 2: nation's undivided attention. In Kingston, Ontario, prisoners hold six guards
Speaker 2: and insist their demands be met or else the inmates
Speaker 2: needed to figure out what to do with their hostages. There,
Speaker 2: of course, were some who wanted to just kill the
Speaker 2: guards and not let this opportunity slide by, while others
Speaker 2: wanted to protect the guards because without them there was
Speaker 2: nothing stopping the police from just shooting their way in
Speaker 2: to regain control. But aside from the guards, there was
Speaker 2: another group of hostages. There was even more disagreement over
Speaker 2: the undesirables. The undesirables are the men at the very
Speaker 2: bottom of the inmates social order, the rapists, child abusers,
Speaker 2: pedophiles and informants who were kept in Cell Block one D.
Speaker 2: The undesirables are kept completely separate from the general population
Speaker 2: for their own safety. If the main population ever got
Speaker 2: their hands on them, they try to kill them. So
Speaker 2: now that the prison had fallen, the fate of Cell
Speaker 2: Block one D was very much in jeopardy, but for
Speaker 2: the time being, the riot leaders wanted to keep them safe.
Speaker 2: The inmates appointed a committee to speak on their behalf,
Speaker 2: and the two sides would meet regularly, giving updates and
Speaker 2: passing along their demands to the media. Number one medication
Speaker 2: for those who need it. Number two food they needed
Speaker 2: to feed their hostages and insisted on control of the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and three security. They wanted assurance that there would be
Speaker 2: no surprise offensives that would jeopardize the lives of inmate
Speaker 2: and guard alike. At the bargaining table, the discussions appeared
Speaker 2: civil and well organized and intentioned, but everything was that
Speaker 2: a stalemate, with neither side budging. Many members of the
Speaker 2: public had no idea of the state of things on
Speaker 2: the inside, and found it easy to empathize with the
Speaker 2: inmates who'd been suffering out of sight of Canadian society
Speaker 2: outside the wall. The police had the place surrounded and
Speaker 2: the Canadian Armed Forces were called in as the riot
Speaker 2: became the top story in the nation. But inside the prison,
Speaker 2: the main persistent thing was the cold. They'd recklessly smashed
Speaker 2: so many windows that the place felt like a Nordic castle,
Speaker 2: with the icy wind coming off Lake Ontario chilling them
Speaker 2: to the bone. As they ran low on things to
Speaker 2: keep the fires burning, Roger took the time to explore
Speaker 2: the place to see if he could find some snacks.
Speaker 2: At first, and a little later he was involved in
Speaker 2: the making and hanging of one of the lasting images
Speaker 2: of the riot. The banner hung out the top dome window,
Speaker 2: which read under new management. Roger claims to have been
Speaker 2: part of the group who advocated for keeping the hostages
Speaker 2: safe and alive. There was a small group who worked
Speaker 2: in shifts to safeguard the prisoners from the wolf packs
Speaker 2: who roamed the cell blocks thirsty for blood. But after
Speaker 2: a few days it became apparent that whatever civility had
Speaker 2: remained among the inmates in the first day or two
Speaker 2: was merely a mirage, and with the combination of the cold,
Speaker 2: the running low on supplies, and the growing desperation, there
Speaker 2: was no way this was going to have a happy ending.
Speaker 2: But no one would believe how horrifying a turn everything
Speaker 2: was about to take.
Speaker 6: Everybody was going a little bit crazy, and they decided
Speaker 6: that they were going to drag the undesirables from d
Speaker 6: block here into the central part of the dome.
Speaker 2: A small group of the most violent men in the
Speaker 2: place said enough was enough. If they were just gonna
Speaker 2: end up rotting away in Millhaven anyway, they might as
Speaker 2: well get to do something they'd always wanted to do.
Speaker 6: They dragged them out, screaming, and they tied them to
Speaker 6: fourteen chairs with wire rope and chained. He held a
Speaker 6: kangaroo court.
Speaker 2: In the central dome of the prison. There's a truly
Speaker 2: theatrical layout. All around the center circle are catwalks four
Speaker 2: stories high.
Speaker 7: All these galities of the nags and demo stairways, and
Speaker 7: all these heart like figures all leaning over the rail
Speaker 7: in a spot like the high dome, shining on the
Speaker 7: floor just like a stage light.
Speaker 2: The leader took the stage and asked the sea of
Speaker 2: faces above him, what shall we do, gentlemen, Cast right them,
Speaker 2: cut their throats, kill them. The faces shouted. As the
Speaker 2: bloodthirsty audience began rhythmically pounding the railings in anticipation. The
Speaker 2: man in the center shouted, the show is about to begin.
Speaker 5: The twelve thirteen chairs were all eye together, and then
Speaker 5: they're rich, realistically tortured.
Speaker 2: At first, the undesirables were beaten with clubs, kicked, slashed.
Speaker 2: Before long, blood began to pool on the dome floor
Speaker 2: as the hundreds looked on, horrified at the violence and
Speaker 2: depravity of their peers. At one point in the proceedings,
Speaker 2: a figure emerged on the makeshift stage to try and
Speaker 2: put a stop to the senseless violence.
Speaker 6: One guy lost his mind for a moment and ran
Speaker 6: into this inner circle where the fourteen undesirables were being tortured,
Speaker 6: and everybody gave a gasp of shocked and said, the
Speaker 6: guy's crazy. He went in there and he says, you
Speaker 6: got to stop this torture. You got to stop this cruelty,
Speaker 6: and biff bang arm bars to the head, boots knives
Speaker 6: at him. He crawled out of the circle just barely alive.
Speaker 6: And that was one example to everybody else. Don't interfere
Speaker 6: or you'll end up tied up to that chair.
Speaker 2: Some of the onlookers would try to slink away from
Speaker 2: the violence and go wander to a different part of
Speaker 2: the prison, but looking away was not an option.
Speaker 6: Sort of wolf packs would roam around and they drag
Speaker 6: the guys out of their cell and you say, come
Speaker 6: back to the dome.
Speaker 1: You need to show a force.
Speaker 6: The army and the prison warden is looking through the
Speaker 6: windows of binnockers and they got to see that there's
Speaker 6: a shower.
Speaker 2: After the initial beating of all the undesirables, they were
Speaker 2: covered in sheets and if you were one of the
Speaker 2: unfortunate souls in the circle, all you could hear were
Speaker 2: the sounds of steel bars snapping bones, the crunch of
Speaker 2: fists breaking noses, the moans of the beaten, and the
Speaker 2: gasps of the horrified crowd. The sounds alone made it
Speaker 2: obvious that not everyone would be making it out of
Speaker 2: the dome alive. One of the main undesirables taking the
Speaker 2: worst of it was a convicted child molester. After having
Speaker 2: his ribs broken, his chair was tipped backward, his head
Speaker 2: bouncing off the cement.
Speaker 1: And the rail walked over and took his knife slacks.
Speaker 1: This guy tied to the chair, crash and sank. Wo
Speaker 1: took a steel mop.
Speaker 2: Actually it wasn't a steel mug. It was a chalice
Speaker 2: stolen from the chapel.
Speaker 1: Fill the steel mop full of blood.
Speaker 5: Look the guy tied up in the chair, hook him
Speaker 5: the eye said, here's to you, sucker, drank the guy's blood,
Speaker 5: took an iron bar and killed the.
Speaker 2: Guy's It was the most savage ending imaginable. In the end,
Speaker 2: two of the undesirables were killed and the rest were
Speaker 2: left barely clinging to life. As the inmates shuffled out
Speaker 2: of the dome, most of them just wanted whatever gate
Speaker 2: they'd opened to hell. To be permanently shut. With the
Speaker 2: end of the riot in sight, Roger took some cellophane
Speaker 2: he'd found in his wanderings and securely wrapped his eighteen
Speaker 2: hundred page manuscript, hoping that he could find a way
Speaker 2: to bring it with him wherever he was about to go.
Speaker 4: I'm sure the pile had to be maybe fourteen sixteen
Speaker 4: inches high or more. That's a lot of sheets. That's
Speaker 4: a lot of sheet, not on how many piles he had.
Speaker 2: Apart from his own life. It was the only thing
Speaker 2: he wanted to bring with him from this cursed place.
Speaker 2: A surrender was brokeered. The military and police moved in,
Speaker 2: and with machine guns trained on them, the inmates came
Speaker 2: out with their hands up, one at a time. When
Speaker 2: it was his turn, Roger emerged from the rubble with
Speaker 2: a cellophane wrapped manuscript held high above his head. He
Speaker 2: pleaded to keep it, but a guard tore the package
Speaker 2: from Roger's hands and tossed it into a heap of garbage.
Speaker 2: As Roger protested in Vain, the horrible misstep that the
Speaker 2: inmates had made by riding when they did was that
Speaker 2: all it really accomplished was that they made their inevitable
Speaker 2: transfer to the Supermax and Millhaven happened ahead of schedule.
Speaker 2: Roger's name was called to board the bus, and when
Speaker 2: the inmates emerged onto the street outside the pen, there
Speaker 2: was a considerable media presence. Many members of the public
Speaker 2: were holding up signs of support and were impressed with
Speaker 2: what the inmates had managed to pull off in their
Speaker 2: effort to get their message out. As the bus drove
Speaker 2: off to Millhaven, the inmates might have thought that maybe
Speaker 2: in the end they had done something that would affect
Speaker 2: positive change, that they had played their hand well, but
Speaker 2: they didn't know what was waiting for them when they
Speaker 2: arrived at the haven. In a lifetime filled with beatings,
Speaker 2: the one that Roger received getting off the bus in
Speaker 2: Millhaven was perhaps the most consequential. When the bus arrived,
Speaker 2: there was a gag of Millhaven guards with their weapons drawn,
Speaker 2: ready to send a very strong message to the newbies.
Speaker 2: Fresh off of taking some of their brothers hostage, Roger
Speaker 2: and his fellow inmates were subject to walking a gauntlet.
Speaker 2: Imagine a beating so bad and cruel that, even given
Speaker 2: what the inmates had just done in KPD, and even
Speaker 2: given the power imbalance that exists between inmates and guard
Speaker 2: that many of the guards forming the Gauntlet would later
Speaker 2: be arrested and tried for what they did to Roger
Speaker 2: and the other prisoners that day. Many of the inmates
Speaker 2: were clubbed and blackjacked and then were dragged inside to
Speaker 2: their new home. And thus the Great Riot of seventy
Speaker 2: one had concluded if their actions did affect any positive change,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't feel it until many years in the future. Okay,
Speaker 2: are you still with me? Good, because here comes the
Speaker 2: fucking crazy part. So, in the aftermath of the riot,
Speaker 2: KP was obviously just a huge mess. Everything was mangled,
Speaker 2: everything was dirty, and so they began the long process
Speaker 2: of cleaning it all up.
Speaker 4: They cleaned out the cells, you know, and everything was
Speaker 4: just tossed, just tossed in the middle of the yard
Speaker 4: in one great, big, great, big pile.
Speaker 2: All the broken glass, bent and damaged cell doors and
Speaker 2: everyone's personal effects, including something very special to Roger, were
Speaker 2: all thrown in one big pile and hauled off to
Speaker 2: the city dump.
Speaker 4: It was all gone, all his work, and that had
Speaker 4: been a few years. Uh, he just figured I've lost
Speaker 4: it all.
Speaker 2: But there was a teacher, one of the school teachers
Speaker 2: who worked inside KP and in the aftermath of the riot,
Speaker 2: this teacher is like, what do you mean there's nothing left?
Speaker 2: I had a perfectly functional classroom with nice chairs and desks,
Speaker 2: and I had things in that classroom that were special
Speaker 2: to me. You knuckleheads just threw it all in the garbage.
Speaker 2: So then this teacher was like, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 2: the dump then to see if anything from my classroom
Speaker 2: is salvageable. And you know what, I don't know if
Speaker 2: that teacher in the end was able to find what
Speaker 2: he was looking for at the dump. I don't know
Speaker 2: if he ended up finding any of his classroom materials
Speaker 2: that he was looking for. All I know is that
Speaker 2: he found something he wasn't looking for, because after a
Speaker 2: time coming through the rubble at the city dump, he
Speaker 2: was thinking about just getting out of there by points
Speaker 2: to his.
Speaker 5: Hand, fell on corner of his package, and out of curiosity,
Speaker 5: he shook it loose and there was my manscript.
Speaker 1: Taged wit is still in pact of.
Speaker 2: My name on picture it. This teacher picks up this
Speaker 2: package in the rubble like it's Jumanji, and he tugs
Speaker 2: at the edge and discovers that Underneath several layers of
Speaker 2: plastic are the words Roger Koran inmate number nine zero
Speaker 2: three three, I Shit You Not. Go Boy is a
Speaker 2: production from Campside Media in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. Listen
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Go Boy was written and hosted by me
Speaker 2: Sam Wellens. Our producer is Rob Lindsay of Paradox Pictures.
Speaker 2: Laine Rose is our senior producer. Sound design, mix and
Speaker 2: engineering by Garrett Tiedemant, original music by Garrett Tiedemant, fact
Speaker 2: checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected archival clips are from
Speaker 2: CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy was written by Roger Kuran.
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts executive producers are Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Kingston Pentitentry Tours and Greg Guthrow from
Speaker 2: Saint Lawrence Parks Commission. Thanks also to Canada's Penitentiary Museum,
Speaker 2: Mike Schreider, Dave Saint Ounge and Correctional Service Canada. Campside
Speaker 2: Media's executive producers are Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam hoff
Speaker 2: and Matt cher A special thanks to our Operations to
Speaker 2: Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Marra, and Destiny Dingle. If
Speaker 2: you enjoyed Go Boy, please rate and review the show
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.