This originally appeared as a blog post on the Dundurn Press website.

Kingston, Ontario, is an historic city located at the meeting point of the St. Lawrence and Cataraqui rivers on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Kingston is a vibrant cultural hub, known for its markets, festivals, restaurants, and its heritage buildings, many crafted from locally mined limestone.

There is something else that Kingston has long been known for: prisons. In its heyday, the Greater Kingston area was home to an astonishing ten minimum-, medium-, and maximum-security federal penitentiaries…