prison

PRISONER EXPERIMENTATION
RICK CARLSON
Survivor of Canadian Prision Experiments

PRISON EXPERIMENTS HAUNT INMATES
By Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill
Ottawa Citizen October 13, 1998

OTTAWA Richard Carlson woke up in the East Block of Kingston Penitentiary, a 10-centimetre gash on his neck, another on his right arm, millimetres from a major artery. He had lived through one nightmare, but now another, much more terrifying, was about to begin. Over the previous 10 days, he carved himself with razor blades to end weeks of torment from voices, he said had been piped day and night into his Collins Bay Penitentiary prison cell. The night before, Carlson almost finished himself off in the military hospital to which he had been transferred. The duty officer looked in on him and saw him slashing his throat. The officer called for something to knock Carlson out but the request was denied. Eventually, hospital staff got him out alive. “From the time we were notified the inmate was slashing it took 45 minutes to have him removed from his cell,” notes a January 1974 medical report detailing the incident.
As horrific as that ordeal was, it would pale in comparison to Carlson’s next seven months in the psychiatric unit in the East Block of Kingston Pen, a forbidding maximum-security prison on the shores of Lake Ontario, where he now found himself. Carlson says he was given 20 different drugs, including truth serum, that would induce hallucinations. He would imagine his food talking to him. He would see polar bears in his cell, amid wild winds. He suspects he received electroconvulsive shock therapy. Carlson believes he was used a scientific guinea pig. He’s believed that for years. Five years ago he stood up in court and told a judge he was a pawn for researchers. He complained again this past January when convicted of the latest in a long string of armed robberies.Now, because of recent revelations about the federal prison system, the Canadian government is being forced to take Richard Carlson’s complaint a little more seriously.
Southam News and the Ottawa Citizen recently disclosed that hundreds of federal inmates were used as guinea pigs in the name of science in the 1960s and ‘70s. Volunteers took part in experiments involving the hallucinogenic drug LSD-25, trials of untested pharmaceuticals and food additives, sensory deprivation and electric shock studies. The federal prison service banned such research in 1978.Carlson and other inmates say they can recall the East Block experiments.
“The East Cell Block, this place was the house of horrors of Kingston Penitentiary,” says Bob McDonald, a Kingston inmate from 1963 to 1970. There was always stories of people coming out of there on drugs and shock treatments.” Carlson is currently in jail in Thunder Bay, Ont., awaiting sentencing later this month for armed robbery. Crown prosecutors have filed an application to have him declared a dangerous offender, which would effectively lock him up forever. Since he first went to prison in 1964, Carlson has been a free man all of three years. He is a habitual hold-up artist who has done time in several of the institutions that dot the Kingston area.
But the government is taking notice of more than Carlson’s criminal past. In March, the Citizen disclosed details of a 1961 experiment in which 23 inmates at Kingston’s Prison for Women were given LSD. As a result, an advocacy group for survivors of human experimentation (ACHES-MC Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors) appealed on Carlson’s behalf to Solicitor General Andy Scott. Suddenly, bureaucrats of the federal prison service were not so quick to brush off Carlson. On March 10, Assistant Corrections Commissioner Jerry Hooper wrote to his boss, Commissioner Ole Ingstrup, about Carlson’s case. “You may wish to request we conduct a formal review of the matter. No doubt, we can expect many more such calls given recent publicity,” says Hooper’s memo, obtained under the Access to Information Act.
In April, the Correctional Service of Canada wrote Carlson, requesting patience. The letter explained the service had asked the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law for advice concerning the long-term effects of LSD as well as help in developing guidelines for addressing cases brought forward by individual inmates. The government had turned to the Montreal university because of a complaint from ex-inmate Dorothy Proctor, who spoke out about her involvement in the 1961 LSD test at the Prison for Women. Eventually, Proctor filed a lawsuit against the federal government and prison officials. She maintains researchers used her as a “lab rat,” giving her an overdose of LSD while a 17-year-old prisoner in solitary confinement. The 200-page McGill report, completed last month, is being studied by corrections officials.
The department won’t say how many inmates other than Carlson and Proctor have come forward. Though it deals primarily with Proctor’s complaint and the LSD experiment, the report will help determine how the government handles complaints from other inmates.
While a full picture of Kingston Pen’s East Block is just emerging, Canadians have had occasional glimpses behind its walls, notably through the work of award-winning jailhouse author Roger Caron. In his gritty account of prison life, Go-Boy!, Caron painted a brutal portrait of the wing’s psychiatric ward as he remembered it upon arriving in 1962. “In those days the ward was a real loony bin where everything could and did happen,” he wrote. “Both the medical and the custodial staff seemed powerless to do much more than keep a semblance of order; this was done by handing out tranquilizers like candy, in the hope of slowing the patients down to the point where they didn’t kill each other. “Retribution and banishment were the catch words then, certainly not rehabilitation or cures.” Caron graphically describes one procedure that “was used more as punishment than anything else” - electroconvulsive therapy, a controversial treatment involving the application of electricity. He recalls nurses fastening electrodes to his head and placing a stick between his teeth. “Start counting backwards from one hundred, slowly,” ordered the doctor as he squeezed medication into my blood system. My voice was barely audible by the time I ticked off ‘ninety-two’. That was when the switch on the machine was activated! My brain seemed to explode inside my skull as I bit down convulsively on the stick and my body jerked about spasmodically on the table. A few more jerks and I suddenly went limp.” Caron awoke three hours later with a bad headache, sore neck muscles and parched throat. “If their purpose was to drive the devil from my soul then I was more than willing to tell the shrinks that they had succeeded and not to submit me to any more shocks. In actuality the doctors were just as mystified as I was as to what the shocks were really supposed to accomplish.”
Former inmate Bob McDonald was aware of what was going on in the East Block and did everything he could to avoid it. But the promise of rewards led McDonald to volunteer for experiments in other parts of the prison. He recalls announcements on prison loudspeakers that regularly solicited volunteers for various studies. McDonald dipped his hand in cold water, placed his palm on a bed of sharp tacks and allowed electrodes to fire shocks into his body. The experiments were intended to determine how much pain an inmate could withstand. The tests left no ill effects and were worth taking because of the payoffs, he says today. “They might give you a couple of packs of tobacco. In those days, you didn’t have big canteens, so an extra pack of tobacco was a big score.” McDonald says it was also routine for inmates to receive 30 to 60 days off their sentences - an account that contradicts government policy of the time.
A 1963 prison service code prohibited academic or commercial researchers from offering subjects incentives to participate in experiments. McDonald says the tests in the East Cell Block were far more serious than any in which he took part. “They were definitely chemical,” he recalls, “because you’d see people come out of ECB . . . it was a horrific joke. You’d see someone with the shakes and someone would say, “He’s just done one of those tests for 30 days (off his sentence).” Inmates in the East Block were separated from the rest of the prison population. Guards would sometimes allow inmates from the two sides to talk to each other through the fence - but not always. “You’d go over there and they’d say, “Not today, today is treatment day.” They’d keep you right away from the fence for a few days,” said McDonald. “I don’t know if they were curing them or wrecking them, or whether they were experimental or thought they were doing the right thing.”
McDonald, 54, first met Carlson in the Kingston Pen when both were serving time for armed robbery in the 1960s. He believes the East Block made Carlson what he is today. “They drove him nuts. They made him one bad dude.” By age 16, Richard Carlson had serious problems. According to his prison files, which he allowed Southam News and the Citizen to view, Richard Albert Carlson was born in Thunder Bay to an alcoholic father who abused his mother and his six siblings. Richard, born in 1948, was the Carlsons’ fourth child. The beatings often landed Richard’s mother in hospital. Once, his father=20 dunked her head in a slop pail. At age 12, Richard was wetting the bed. By 16, he was in Kingston Pen, serving his first of many sentences for armed robbery. Despite spending most of his life behind bars, he has found time to finish his high school equivalence, get married, father two children, get divorced and further his education; he took training as an electronics technician, and apprenticed in plumbing and upholstering.
“I found Richard a warm, honest and open person,” wrote a prison psychiatrist in 1979. “Considering his remarkable educational achievements and his good personality, he could make a very valuable citizen.” It was not to be.
Carlson nearly succeeding in killing himself in the 1974 slashing incident. He says he was driven to injure himself by the incessant bombardment of voices into his cell. The phrases, piped in by a speaker, would be repeated over and over, at all hours of the day and night. “How many bank robberies have you committed?” “Ever hurt anyone?” “Ever kill anyone?” “How many people have you killed?”
Carlson believes someone was trying to brainwash him. The experiences he describes are, in fact, similar to the “psychic driving” experiments of the disgraced Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. Cameron used a combination of drugs, such as LSD, along with sensory deprivation and repetitive taped messages to reprogram the minds of his patients.
In late 1970s, it was disclosed that Cameron’s work was funded not only by the Canadian government but by a front operation for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He was among several prominent researchers the CIA covertly supported in a Cold War battle to unlock the secrets of manipulating the human mind. After his attempted suicide, Carlson was transferred to the East Block of=20 Kingston Pen. For seven months, Carlson says, he was a guinea pig for psychiatrists and staff. He says they allegedly pumped him full of strange drugs, including scopolamine, a truth serum. He believes they zapped him with electric shocks. He hallucinated non-stop, he says. “Food was actually talking to me - I’m not kidding you - eyes in the potatoes were actually talking to me. I know it sounds bizarre.”
Not to ex-inmate Bob McDonald. “I have my reservations about all of this,” he says, “but if this happened to somebody, it happened to Rick Carlson.” By 1976, Carlson had been transferred from Kingston Pen back to Collins Bay where, he says, he was locked in solitary confinement and subjected to more questionable experiments. In one, cell walls were extended out a metre or so prisoners in adjacent cells couldn’t see each other. Each cell was painted a different colour. He says psychologists told him they were trying to measure the effects of sensory deprivation and colour stimulus. A year or two later at Millhaven Penitentiary, Carlson says, he was injected with other chemicals that induced more hallucinations. “I saw a polar bear come right into the cell, I nearly had a heart attack . . . 80- or 90-mile-an-hour winds coming crosswise in the cell just driving stuff in.” Carlson suspects researchers were trying to program his behaviour. “This is what I believe was going on - they were starting some kind of a test thing to see if they could trigger a guy to do something. You follow me?”
Carlson wonders if something more exotic, perhaps even the CIA, is behind what happened to him in Canadian prisons. There is no known evidence to support these theories, but considerable documentation to support some of his other claims. Last month, Carlson was returned to the Thunder Bay jail after 60 days at the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, the country’s maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. He was sent there for a mandatory assessment. Under the provisions for determining dangerous offender status, suspects must be examined by two psychiatrists, one for the Crown, one for the defence. An August assessment from Penetanguishene reads in part that there is “no compelling evidence” Carlson now or ever suffered from a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia. Over the years, many doctors have debated the state of his mental health. Carlson, however, asks what one should call someone who, in the name of science, zaps an inmate with electric shock or gives them hallucinogenic drugs. “The people who say that I’m nuts, would you say (they’re) sane?”

CBC - CBQ radio
November 09, 1998
Thunder Bay, Ontario 7.40am
CBC-CBQ Interviewer: LISA LACO
10 years ago, few people would have believed that Canadians were once used as guinea pigs in experiments involving LSD. Today we know those experiments did take place, and they were paid for in some cases by the CIA. Now there are more allegations of psychiatric abuse. Later today the program This Morning will look at claims that prisoners were used in experiments in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Richard Carlson is one of those people making claims. He says he was given a variety of drugs while in prison, and he says the experience caused him psychological trauma and led to several suicide attempts. Carlson is currently an inmate at Thunder Bay District Jail.

LISA LACO: This story begins in essence I guess at the Kingston Penitentiary in the East [Cell] Block. What happened to you there?

Richard Carlson: On that block I was subjected to various kinds of different tests and different kinds of drugs. I had been sent there because I had cut my own throat in Millhaven Penitentiary where I underwent - I made the mistake - I got into a test there. I was given psychic driving. Since I came forward with this kind of stuff I have uncovered data, I have written to people, they have written to me, I have been in touch with groups. I found out pharmaceutical companies have been testing different kinds of drugs inside the prisons there. While I was in Kingston East Cell Block I know for sure different drugs were given to me because they had different side effects. My allegations are that I was hypnotized, psychic driving was used on me, and I was basically used as some kind of test subject in an experiment, some kind of Manchurian Candidate experiment.
I know this sounds bizarre, but there are other proven cases where people have been compensated in this country for the same kind of trip from Montreal Allen Memorial Hospital. Women went in with post-partum depression, they were put to sleep for 85 days and experiments were done on them. This is ordinary Canadian citizens, and it wasn’t done only with Canadian government money. It was done with CIA money because the cheques were paid from the CIA.

LISA LACO: I am trying to sort out here now the Kingston Prison, the East Cell Block that you are talking about. Was that like a psychiatric ward, that’s why they sent you there?

Richard Carlson: Correct.

LISA LACO: When these experiments came up, did they ask for volunteers, or were you sort of—

Richard Carlson: No, no, no - prison orderlies would just drag you down the range, threw you on a table, or they fed you stuff and it was put right into your food. And you woke up on the floor in a Chinese Cell [solitary cell with no sink, no toilet; Richard Carlson was held for 90 days in a Chinese Cell.] Or you woke up on a table [gurney] at the end of the range, strapped down, and things were done to you - whatever they wanted to do.

LISA LACO:
Do you know what kind of drugs you were given?

Richard Carlson: I was given sodium pentathol, sodium amytal, scopalomine, definitely some kind of heavy-duty hallucinogenics, I mean really heavy-duty - where you are strobed right completely out of it. I was given amphetamines. I know that for a fact because it says I had amphetamine psychosis on my file. I was in maximum security - four steel walls, even the door is steel. There was only a little wire mesh, a foot high, 3 or 4 inches wide of chicken screen. Where would I get amphetamines?

LISA LACO: What is it you are looking for?

Richard Carlson: I am just looking to get this stuff stopped.

LISA LACO: So you want help from them?

Richard Carlson: I would like help from somebody. There’s got to be somebody in Canada because this stuff isn’t right. This is wrong. We aren’t talking Dr. Seuss here - the next thing they will be doing is DNA experiments - inside the prisons. Nobody in the public is going to speak out. They won’t say one word for the next 30 years.
Because I’ll tell you what - people are leaking this stuff now, and I think it is being done deliberately. They are only leaking a little bit at a time. I wrote to these reporters four or five months ago. They went behind the scenes and started checking, and they came up with 30 different experiments these people have done. I am telling you, these people have been doing experiments. Right now, as we are sitting here talking today, they are doing experiments with methadone.

LISA LACO: Would you like to see an investigation of sorts. Do you think that will ever happen?

Richard Carlson: I would definitely like to see an investigation and I don’t think it will ever happen. Because I think the government will whitewash the whole thing. I think as long as the news media stays a little bit on top of it - I am not talking about every day - I know there’s world events of major importance happening that you have to keep on top of.
But the things that are wrong - once in a while when a person does come forward, things have to be checked out too, eh? Because I started speaking out about this stuff, this testing, and I didn’t even know about pharmaceutical companies being given permission from the Outside. I am not talking about Canadian pharmaceutical companies. We are talking about United States pharmaceutical companies.
A foreign country can’t come into this country and start giving out pharmaceuticals—we’re not chimpanzees here. Right?

LISA LACO: Mr. Carlson, what worries you most?

Richard Carlson: What worries me most? To tell you the truth, that these people could use hypnosis on me and more psychic driving, and lock me up for longer. There’s nothing else they can do to me. I’ve been in for thirty-one years already. The biggest part of my time being in was caused by experiments done on me years ago - it started in Millhaven.
I know a lot of people in Thunder Bay or across the country say, “well, so what, the guy’s a prisoner. Let him sit there, blah, blah, big deal. They tested pharmaceuticals, pesticides, insecticides, hypnosis, psychic driving. Made him cut his throat. Who cares? The guy’s just a stupid prisoner anyway.” Right?
Their sons and their daughters - you check it out. One in ten people in Canada are going to prison. Their sons and daughters will be coming through these places sooner or later and it will be done to them. They seem to get away with a lot of things around here.

LISA LACO: Mr. Carlson, thanks very much for talking to me this morning.

Richard Carlson: Thank you.
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Richard Carlson is a prisoner in Thunder Bay District Jail. At least one advocacy group asked for a formal investigation of his claims. ACHES-MC, Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors - Mind Control.
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[Phone interview from Thunder Bay District Jail. RICHARD CARLSON has been held on remand for 15 months. At his court appearance on January 28, 1998 for a bank robbery charge (1992), Richard asked to be assessed by a psychiatrist to determine whether he was subjected to CIA brainwashing experiments while a prisoner in Kingston between 1968 and 1974. He had been offered a plea bargain before he went into court that day - five years. When Richard asked the judge to investigate his having been subjected to brainwashing experiments between 1968 and 1974, the judge replied, “You’ve raised some issues that may require looking into.” They looked into it all right. At Richard Carlson’s next court appearance, the Crown presented an application for Dangerous Offender Status. From a plea bargain to locking him up for life?
You don’t have to be a ‘brain surgeon’ to assess this turn of the Crown’s probe.]
Lynne Moss-Sharman--Canada Contact ACHES-MC 807-622-5407 <lsharman@microage-tb.com>

CARLSON GETS ACCESS TO PRISON FILE
Dangerous Offender Candidate Has Chance to Prove 'Brainwashing'

Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal
May 01, 1999
by Phil Andrews

A Thunder Bay man being considered for dangerous offender status has received help from the court in his quest to determine whether he was subjected to illegal drug experiments while in Canadian prisons over 25 years ago. Richard Albert (Ricky) Carlson, 51, has won the release of his complete Correctional Services of Canada record through a motion at Superior Court of Justice proceedings to determine whether he should be labelled a dangerous offender.

Carlson, who is going through dangerous offender proceedings as part of sentencing in a bank robbery case, has repeatedly told the court his past criminal behaviour may have been influenced by brainwashing experiments with LSD and othe drugs while he was an inmate in Canadian prisons between 1968 and 1974.

Defence lawyer Glenn Sandberg said the prison files obtained through an order of Mr. Justice Terrence Platana this week will contain more information than Carlson could have obtained through a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOI) request. But Sandberg also said he hasn't reviewed the material and doesn't know whether it contains information related to Carlson's experimentation claims.

James Newland, a lawyer representing Carlson in a civil claim against the CSC related to the prison-experiment allegations said he's received prison records about Carlson but isn't confident he has the complete file. He called this week's disclosure "a welcome development." "The simple issue is, if Richard Carlson was involved in experiments at any of the various prisons where he was incarcerated and if that experimenting harmed him psychologically - so that it may make him a more difficult person and bring him closer to dangerous offender criteria - it certainly raises an interesting issue (for the courts)," said Newland.

No statement of claim is filed in Carlson's civil case. Newland also represents Dorothy Proctor in a suit against the CSC. Proctor was an inmate at the Prison for Women in Kingston. The CSC has admitted she and as many as 22 other women were subjects of LSD experiments at the facility in the early 1960's.
Platana expressed reluctance at ordering the release of CSC files to Carlson's criminal defence team because of Carlson's civil proceedings and because the material might contain personal information about Carlson. The files were ordered released after Carlson authorized his consent at the dangerous offender proceedings. Those proceedings are to continue on August 3.
If Carlson is labelled a dangerous offender, he will receive a virtual life sentence in prison. The province brought this sentencing application after Carlson's January 28, 1998 convictions for armed robbery and other charges in the August 13, 1992 robbery of a local Royal Bank of Canada branch.

ACHES Canada Fax to Canadian Human Rights Commission
10 Nov 1999

From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <lsharman@microage-tb.com>
Human Rights Commission re: Richard Carlson
FAX: 613-947-7279 November 09, 1999
Canadian Human Rights Commission (Ottawa)
Re: Richard Albert Carlson #116430A
Attention: Gino Richer

Dear Mr. Richer:
Further to our telephone conversation of November 8, 1999, I am writing on behalf of Richard Carlson, currently held in Thunder Bay District Jail awaiting sentencing and outcome of a Dangerous Offender application on December 10, 1999. (sic, now changed to December 30, 1999) Mr. Carlson has been held on remand and transported back and forth between this Jail and the Sudbury District Jail since July 4, 1997, a total of 28 months. He spent five months in what is known as “The Hole” (makeshift SHU) in the Thunder Bay Jail. (It is also known as the “Hanging Cell” because a trapdoor still exists in the floor of this particular isolation unit which was formerly used for executions.) We believe both the Federal and Provincial governments are maliciously discriminating against Mr. Carlson at the present time because he is an inmate with a psychiatric disability caused by psychiatric and psychological brainwashing experimentation in federal correctional facilities. He has been given a multitude of psychiatric diagnoses during his thirty year detention by Correctional Services Canada (dependent upon the philosophical research stance of institutional psychiatrists and psychologists in various locations, at different periods in time), and the Crown is currently pursuing the label of “anti-social personality disorder” with the goal of having Mr. Carlson declared a Dangerous Offender. We believe this application for Dangerous Offender status serves both a Federal and a Provincial purpose. It was not submitted until Mr. Carlson requested that Justice Terrence Platana investigate the impact of brainwashing experiments conducted on him in Kingston Penitentiary, Millhaven and Collins Bay institutions in the late 1960’s and 1970’s (see article January 29, 1998). Mr. Carlson in fact lodged a personal request to CSC in March of that year asking for such an investigation into his own federal institutional history as Inmate #116430A. A formal notice of claim was filed on Mr. Carlson’s behalf by Toronto lawyer, James Newland, on October 14, 1998.

It is our belief that the experimentation carried out on Mr. Carlson was in fact “scientific torture” and was modeled on the experiments conducted under Adolf Hitler in concentration camps during WWII, refining techniques that were later used in regimes such as General Pinochet’s in Chile. The public is becoming more informed about the covert psychiatric experimentation, sensory deprivation and degrading treatment of inmates in institutions such as Kingston Penitentiaries (both men’s and women’s facilities), Millhaven, Collins Bay. Many of the inmates were poorly educated and maltreated teenagers at the time of their incarceration and subsequent use as human guinea pigs by psychiatrists and psychologists. Parts of the federal and provincial penal system were conveyor belts for scientific research. At age 52, Mr. Carlson is one of the men who are still alive to talk about that particular time in history. It goes without saying that neither Correctional Services Canada nor the local provincial court wants Mr. Carlson to speak, wants Mr. Carlson to receive help, support, and appropriate treatment - to heal from what was done to him. If he were able to begin the healing process, he would be able to speak more fully about what he remembers of the experiments.

It is ironic and deeply disturbing to know that torture victims from Central America, Bosnia and other countries are welcomed to Canada as political refugees and offered support, vocational and educational assistance, counseling and intensive PTSD therapy for the impact of psychiatric and military torture. We do not, as a society, invite them to this country and then throw them into an isolation cell and perform systematic degradation and silencing, a re-brainwashing in fact.
Yet Richard Albert Carlson Federal Inmate #116430A is here in Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario, in geographic isolation from the major centres in Canada that might take note of what is being done to him - and he is being treated, as a defence witness said in August, like a “piece of human garbage.”

The Federal Government is in the historical position of being asked to compensate and appropriately serve the long-term needs of inmates and ex-inmates who were subjected to covert experiments in the Federal penitentiary system. C.S.C. has deliberately avoided doing either of these things. The Ottawa Citizen reported on September 26, 1998 that “Canadian prisoners were used as human guinea pigs in questionable medical experiments conducted in federal prisons throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. The tests involved hundreds of male and female prisoners. They were given unproven pharmaceuticals, were subjects in sensory-deprivation research and were involved in pain studies employing electric shocks. In one sensory-deprivation study, 10 Kingston Penitentiary inmates spent seven days in dark isolation cells to test their desire for visual and auditory stimulation.” These cells sound remarkably like the cells used by Staasi in East Germany before the Berlin Wall ceased to physically exist as a physical, political barrier to post war integration.

Headline: “Experiments on Inmates Spark Corrections Probe”. “The corporate memory, like any collective memory, is short, said [CSC] department spokesman Jacques Belanger in a September 30 1998 article in The Ottawa Citizen. “ We are learning about it from you guys [journalists Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill] and we should know about this. “Department officials were most surprised by reports that pharmaceutical companies experimented with untested drugs on inmates.” But not surprised by reports of sensory deprivation and the use of electric shock?

Headline: “MP’S Demand Inquiry Into Prison Tests”, The Ottawa Citizen, September 29, 1998. Blanchfield and Bronskill continue to educate Correctional Services Canada. “The full scope of the experimentation during the era came as a surprise to the country’s leading prisoners’ rights Group. ‘ I think it’s tragic,’ said Graham Stewart, executive director of the John Howard Society. ‘We were trying to protect the general population by experimenting on those that somebody didn’t care about. And that’s a terrible message. That’s immoral, really, in itself,’ he said from Kingston. ‘Anything that diminishes the value of human life in that environment, to my mind, is devastating. It just can’t be tolerated.” Rubin Friedman, director of government relations for B’Nai Brith League for Human Rights, said the experiments trampled the rights of a vulnerable group. ‘It’s as if someone was saying, one group is more human than another. We know that’s a very dangerous line to draw.’ The experiments compromise Canada’s ability to speak out against more serious rights violations in other countries. ‘We see that even in our own back yard we have people who have been experimented upon in a way that we might have found horrific, if it had been another country.’

The silence of Solicitor General Lawrence Macaulay is deafening and damning to CSC, to the Federal Government. His predecessor, then Solicitor General Andy Scott said the McGill Report, “may help him come to terms with the ethical issues raised by the recent reports of broader inmate experimentation. ‘I think that will help us make sure we do the right thing on this and not cause anybody further grief some of the people have been pardoned, some of the people are with new partners who don’t know about their past.’ (The Ottawa Citizen October 1, 1998).

And some are dead. Like Tony Vaitelis, the second male inmate to come forward after Richard Carlson about having been experimented on in Kingston institutions. He was found dead in February 1999, in Thunder Bay. Another man who will remain anonymous in death, a former orderly in ECB in Kingston who had expressed willingness to testify on behalf of Richard Carlson and Tony Vaitelis, was found dead one week later. Three months later Richard Carlson’s son, aged 30, was found dead. All three were sudden deaths; supposed heart attacks.

David Milgaard and Stephen Reid are two surviving inmates who were in Millhaven at the time experiments were being conducted. David Milgaard was forcibly committed in a psychiatric institution earlier this year, prior to receiving his hard-won compensation for wrongfuly conviction. Stephen Reid surprisingly carried out another bank robbery in B.C. in June of this year- - after eleven years straight, as a contributing citizen in Canada. Stanley Faulder who was executed in Texas this year, was subjected to LSD and other experiments from which he never recovered, in a British Columbia facility in the 1960’s. Mr. Carlson can provide a list of names of inmates who died in Millhaven and Collins Bay either by their own hand or sudden heart attack and other ‘causes’ in the midst of this experimental regime.

The Provincial Government, under Premier Mike Harris, appears to have set a quota system for Dangerous Offender applications in Ontario in order to enhance its “get tough regime” Mr. Carlson appears to be the sacrificial lamb for both CSC and the Province of Ontario, with absolutely no regard to the psychiatric disability imposed on him, if not created by, CSC psychiatrists and psychologists (among them, Dr. George D. Scott of Kingston who has also been named by former Kingston Prison for Women inmate, Dorothy Proctor.)

Mr. Carlson’s psychiatric difficulties have been exacerbated by the lengthy detention in district jails where mental health services are not available. Indeed, the Thunder Bay District Jail physician, Dr. Salonen, who supervised Mr. Carlson’s and other district inmates’ mental and physical well being until September 1998, retired then with advanced Parkinson’s Disease. (see Carlson trial, transcript April 26, 1999) Due to his illness, Dr. Salonen was unable to even recognize Mr. Carlson in the courtroom, a mere eight months after retiring. In this article from the library at Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital, a stone’s throw from the Thunder Bay District Jail we read: [Parkinson’s Disease: Quality of Life Issues, Nursing Clinics of North America, Vol. 28, #4, December 1993]: “Quality of life has been reported to be the primary concern of patients with Parkinson’s Disease the concept of quality of life goes beyond the dimensions of health functioning to performance of social roles, mental acuity, emotional states, subjective well-being and interrelationships many patients with PD are reluctant to discuss these concerns with health care providers, however. Unfortunately these unvoiced concerns have a negative effect on acceptance of the disease state and they can significantly affect quality of life.” PD not only impacted on the quality of life of Dr. Salonen, it had a negative effect on inmates under his care, particularly Mr. Carlson who was struggling with multiple issues. The public has to ask why a physician with advanced Parkinson’s Disease was allowed to provide medical treatment and recommendations for district inmates, a many of whom, including Mr. Carlson, had documented need for psychiatric and mental health treatment. In addition Mr. Carlson later discovered he had Thyroid Disease, which was diagnosed at the Sudbury District Jail and previously undetected, had caused further psychiatric distress until medication was prescribed for him. An orthopedic surgeon now has the contract for general medical supervision of Thunder Bay inmates. In May of this year, one inmate (a man in his thirties, with two university degrees) carved the word “HELP” deeply in his abdomen with a razor blade in an attempt to receive psychiatric care. He has over one thousand self-inflicted wounds on his body; a long psychiatric history; the carving went unnoticed by both guards and the physician and other inmates were unable to get help for him. He is still being held, in the makeshift SHU, in this district jail.

Notwithstanding the absence of mental health care and treatment programs in regional district jails, and questionable medical services in the local facility, it is our contention that Mr. Carlson is now being regarded as the test case for CSC with complicity of the Crown in Thunder Bay representing the Provincial Government. Mr. Carlson, a man with a complicated psychiatric history created by experiments conducted on him as a federal inmate, is being held hostage. He is a political prisoner in the Canadian judicial system.

Mr. Carlson was evaluated at the Oakridge facility in Penetang by Clinical Director of Psychiatry, Dr. Ian Hector in August 1998. He was found at that time to not meet the criteria to be designated as a Dangerous Offender. Yet in April 1999, Dr. Hector testified that he had been made to alter his initial written evaluation. We believe the change of opinion rested with a report by a former Oakridge psychologist, Dr. Michael Davidson, who labeled Mr. Carlson as a psychopath (a non-existent DSM diagnosis). His report was withheld by the Crown and not submitted to Judge Terrence Platana by October 30, 1998 “because of a lack of time”, although the Crown was able to fax a copy of the report dated October 5, 1998 to Mr. Carlson at the Thunder Bay District Jail.We believe this was a deliberate delay to keep Mr. Carlson without appropriate care, treatment and support in the District Jail, and to deliberately add to his mental stress and psychiatric deterioration.

Neither Drs. Hector, Davidson nor defence psychologist, Dr. Giorgio Ilacqua, were able to study and evaluate Mr. Carlson’s psychiatric/medical files for the period 1968 to 1974 - because they have disappeared. Dr. Hector, for example, had no knowledge that Mr. Carlson had been given Scopolamine on an experimental basis. He had no awareness of the 7 month period of experimental ECT and other procedures in ECB that led to Mr. Carlson slicing his jugular vein upon release from Dr. George Scott’s psychiatric “care”. He had never previously exhibited any suicidal tendencies. These missing files have not been located or released by CSC, although Judge Terrence Platana ordered that they be provided to Mr. Carlson and his legal counsel, Norman Williams and Glenn Sandberg. “Carlson gets access to prison file: dangerous offender candidate has chance to prove ‘brainwashing’ “ Chronicle Journal Thunder Bay May 1, 1999 - by Phil Andrews. “ Carlson won the release of his complete CSC record through a motion at Superior Court of Justice proceedings to determine whether he should be labeled a dangerous offender. James Newland, a lawyer representing Carlson in a civil claim against the CSC related to the prison-experiment allegations, said ‘The simple issue is, if Richard Carlson was involved in experiments at any of the various prisons where he was incarcerated and if that experimenting harmed him psychologically --so that it may make him a more difficult person and bring him closer to dangerous offender criteria - it certainly raises an interesting issue (for the courts).”

The article continues, “Justice Terrence Platana expressed reluctance at ordering the release of CSC files to Carlson’s criminal defence team because of Carlson’s civil proceedings and because the material might contain personal information about Carlson.” However the files from 1968 to 1974 remain missing and not even Richard Carlson is able to access his “personal information” about psychiatric procedures during that time. CSC is more than cognizant of what must be done for psychiatric survivors such as Mr. Carlson. Indeed, The Ottawa Citizen reported on January 31, 1999 that “Corrections scrambled in the wake of Proctor’s lawsuit and a subsequent South News-Ottawa Citizen investigation that uncovered how federal prison inmates were used in the 1960’s and ‘70’s as guinea pigs in various experiments In response to the stories, the government considered inviting inmates who had suffered long-term effects from any experiments to come forward. However, it has yet to do so.” [FOIA requests by journalists Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill also uncovered CSC internal memos] “As one memo notes: “THIS APPROACH HAS COST IMPLICATIONS WITH RELATION TO TREATMENT OR CARE.” One ex inmate in Kingston had written a letter to CSC dated October 4, 1998. She tells Corrections “it had been three months since their last correspondence as I have heard nothing since then, I’d very much like a reply,” the woman wrote.

Mr. Carlson is the first federal male inmate to make the claim of being used as a human guinea pig in inmate psychiatric experimentation against CSC and we believe the Federal and Provincial Governments are colluding to make an example of him. The Crown recently (November 5, 1999) asked for a sentence of 17-20 years for Mr. Carlson, for a bank robbery committed in Thunder Bay in August, 1992 (a time when Mr. Carlson was living in the province of British Columbia). He cannot appeal this sentence and wrongful conviction until December 10, 1999. (sic, now sentencing is set to December 30, 1999) The Crown is in effect asking for a symbolic death penalty for Mr. Carlson, a lifetime silencing as it were. This request to the Court serves Correctional Services Canada well. Do they believe that CSC will not be perceived as the primary psychiatric torturers, that they are somehow not accountable to Mr. Carlson and the damage done to him while under federal detention in the late 1960’s and 1970’s?

We ask that the Canadian Human Rights Commission undertake an investigation immediately on behalf of Richard Albert Carlson before he disappears again into the Federal penitentiary system, or dies.

Lynne Moss-Sharman
Canada Contact, ACHES-MC
Cc: Joe Commuzzi, MP
Stan Dromisky MP
Michael Gravelle MPP,
Lyn McLeod MPP
James Newland
Dr. Giorgio Ilacqua,
Marie Andree Drouin, CSC,
Graham Stewart Executive Director John Howard Society
Rubin Friedman Director of Government Relations
B’Nai Brith League for Human Rights
Amnesty International London England.

Chronicle Journal Letter To Editor
Thunder Bay, Ont. Oct. 28, 1999
ON BEHALF OF OUR BROTHER
There were a few things that Dr. Giorgio Ilacqua said in court Monday on behalf of our brother, Richard Carlson, that didn't make it into the newspaper ("Crown, Psychologist clash over Carlson" -Oct. 26). We would like to take this opportunity to say them again.
Besides agreeing that Richard is impulsive and all the other things that go along with being locked up in prison for most of his life, Dr. Ilacqua also said that our brother is a very intelligent man who would benefit from rehabilitation, including educational opportunities and counselling for an abusive childhood. The psychologist noted that Richard has very few violent incidents in his file - which he found remarkable considering the brutality found in the prison system itself. We have questioned the dangerous offender application right from the start. Serial child molesters are dangerous; serial killers are dangerous. Our brother is neither of these things.
It is very hard to sit on court benches for 2 1/2 years watching our brother being passed around the Thunder Bay court like a political hot potato. So, it was more than a relief when we heard Dr. Ilacqua speak about our brother - speak of him as a human being who has deep feelings and a good mind. Richard has helped many people in the system over the years; he is loved and respected by all the members of his family and by his many friends.
Sharon Carlson and Linda (Carlson) Vonier

DAY OF DECISION FOR CONVICTED BANK ROBBER

Phil Andrews
Chronicle Journal Thunder Bay Ont.
12/30/99
A man who could be sentenced today to life in prison heads into court “very upbeat and optimistic” according to one of his lawyers. Richard Albert (Ricky) Carlson, 52, a convicted Thunder Bay robber who begged a judge for a 30 year prison sentence is to learn his legal fate today. Defence lawyer Glenn Sandberg said Carlson “was in very good spirits” when they met earlier this week at Thunder Bay Jail. “He’s looking forward to getting this behind him,” Sandberg said Wednesday.
The Ministry of the Attorney General has asked the Superior Court of Justice to find Carlson a dangerous offender which could bring with it an indefinite prison sentence. “We’re prepared for anything,” said Sandberg, one of two out-of-town lawyers who have represented Carlson during the lengthy dangerous offender proceedings. Mr. Justice Terrence Platana, senior regional judge of the Superior Court of Justice is to reveal today whether the Crown has proved Carlson is a dangerous offender. The dangerous offender application was brought after Carlson’s January 28, 1998 convictions for armed robbery, using a firearm, pointing a firearm and wearing a disguise.
The convictions arose from the August 13, 1992 robbery of a now-closed Royal Bank of Canada branch in Thunder Bay’s north core. Carlson has been in custody for the robbery since July 1997.
Carlson defence team has asked the court to consider a five year prison term. In his last of several often heated court addresses a month ago, Carlson told Platana: “I don’t care what I get. I’m just not a dangerous offender but you’re entitled to give me big time. I want 30 years ... I implore you dear God in heaven, give me this time.” Earlier in the sentencing proceedings Carlson asked Platana to give him a life sentence. Carlson has asserted throughout the sentencing that he believes his past criminal behaviour was influenced by what he believes were brainwashing experiments conducted while he was an inmate in Canadian prisons between 1968 and 1974. Those allegations are the subject of a civil claim initiated last year against the Correctional Service of Canada. Courthouse security has been tightened during Carlson’s appearances, marked by Carlson spitting on the first Crown prosecutor assigned to the case and the discovery of a knife blade in a corridor used for prisoner transfers. Carlson’s lengthy criminal record includes assault-related convictions and at least one other armed robbery conviction. Crown and defence psychologists have clashed over whether Carlson can be released without likelihood of a violent reoffence.

17 YEARS IN JAIL FOR ROBBER Chronicle Journal
Thunder Bay Ontario
December 31, 1999
Phil Andrews
A Thunder Bay bank robber who had asked a judge to sentence him to 30 years in prison thanked the judge repeatedly Thursday when he was given a 21 year penal term. Then Richard Albert (Ricky) Carlson turned in the prisoner’s box at the Superior Court of Justice and flashed an obscene gesture and a smile at a knot of city police officers that included Deputy Police Chief Bob Herman.
Carlson, 52, who said he’ll appeal the convictions that led to the lengthy sentence, entered court facing the possibility of being declared a dangerous offender which could have carried with it a virtual lifetime prison term. Mr. Justice Terrence Platana drew a burst of applause from about 20 Carlson supporters by striking down the Crown’s dangerous offender application.
“I take no pleasure in that decision. I simply interpret the law as I see fit,” Platana declared after raising an arm to stop the clapping. Platana called Carlson “one of the most, if not the most, frightening individuals (he has) ever encountered.” But he ruled Carlson wasn’t legally a dangerous offender because the Crown failed to prove that Carlson’s actiions in robbing a city bank in 1992 constituted “a serious personal injury offence.” “Not every robbery necessarily qualifies as a personal injury offence,” said Platana, who highlighted how Carlson shoved a seven months pregnant bank teller and pointed a firearm at the head of another bank employee during the heist. Platana repeatedly pointed out no one was injured and no shots were fired.
The man who on August 13, 1992 robbed $10,375 from a now-closed Royal Bank of Canada branch wore a mask and a motorcycle helmet. On January 28, 1998 a jury found Carlson guilty of armed robbery, using a firearm in the commission of crime, pointing a firearm and wearing a disguise. After the sentencing, defence lawyer Norm Williams said Carlson would appeal the convictions. Previous lawyers for Carlson have asserted he was out of the province when the robbery took place. Platana gave Carlson 3 ½ years credit for time served in pretrial custody. Carlson’s true prison term is 17 ½ years. Platana said Carlson’s lengthy criminal record, which inclues four robbery convictions - two for bank robbery - were among the aggravating factors he considered in the sentencing. Carlson’s decision to turn himself in on the bank robbery charges was a mitigating factor, he said. Herman, who was a detective on the Carlson case before becoming deputy police chief, said he was disappointed with Platana’s dangerous offender ruling, but called it “thorough and fair.” He called Carlson “a very dangerous man” but seemed umperturbed by the promise of an appeal. “It’s a normal process. He has nothing to lose by appealing. He’s facing a really long prison sentence,” said Herman. Carlson was also banned for life from possessing weapons or ammunition.

COURTS WILL SEE MORE OF RICKY CARLSON Chronicle Journal Thunder Bay
Dec. 31, 1999
by Phil Andrews
A 21 year prison term is not the end of the legal challenges for a convicted Thunder Bay bank robber. Richard Albert (Ricky) Carlson, 52, is intent on appealing the convictions that resulted in the lengthy sentence he received at the Superior Court of Justice Thursday said lawyer Norm Williams. In addition to the appeal - Carlson must file within 30 days - he faces unrelated criminal charges and a pending civil action he initiated last year against Correctional Services Canada.
Carlson who was sentenced Thursday on three convictions related to a 1992 city bank robbery is to appear at the Ontario Court of Justice next month on two counts of uttering death threats. The charges were laid after investigation into comments made to Thunder Bay Jail staff in the spring. Carlson was an inmate at the maximums security facility when a correctiions officer and members of the officer’s extended family were the subject of threats.
Glenn Sandberg, another lawyer for Carlson, said the death threat charges aren’t likely to be resolved in court on January 14. Carlson’s bank robbery case, stemming from an August 13, 1992 robbery at a now closed Royal Bank of Canada branch in the city saw him receive convictions for armed robbery, using a handgun in the commission of a crime, pointing a weapon and wearing a disguise. The using a weapon conviction was stayed by the court Tuesday on the grounds that it was covered by the same evidence that led to the armed robbery conviction.
Carlson who has changed lawyers since his armed robbery trial maintained he wasn’t in the city at the time of the robbery. Carlson’s civil case is in its early stages. It’s based on Carlson’s claim that he was the subject of brainwashing experiments while he was an inmate in Canadian prisons between 1968 and 1974. Carlson tried unsuccessfully to have the court consider the claims as a factor in the sentencing in his armed robbery case. A Toronto based civil law attorney represents him in that case.

GROUP GOES TO BAT FOR CARLSON
by Jim Kelly

Chronicle Journal
Thunder Bay Ontario
Tuesday Jan. 04, 2000
An international advocacy group awaits resonse from the Canadian
Human Rights Commission on brainwashing claims made by a Thunder Bay bank robber. Lynne Moss-Sharman, a Canadian contact for the Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors - Mind Control, said Monday her organization wrote to the Commission on November 9. "We ask the Canadian Human Rights Commission to
undertake an investigation immediately on behalf of Richard Albert
Carlson before he dispapears again in the federal penitentiary
system, or dies," Sharman wrote in the letter.
Carlson, who was sentenced Thursday to 17 1/2 years in prison
for convictions stemming from a 1992 bank robbery, claimed that he was subjected to CIA brainwashing experiments between 1968 and 1974 while jailed in Canada. "He's one of the last living survivors (of the men who were brainwashed)," Moss-Sharman said Monday from her Thunder Bay home. "Many of them committed suicide and some died in prison."
It has been reported that hundreds of federal inmates were used as guinea pigs in the name of science in the 1960's and 70's. They took part in experiments involving LSD, untested pharmaceuticals and food additives, sensory deprivation and electric shock. The federal prison service banned such research in 1978. Moss-Sharman said there has been resistance from Correctional Services Canada to accept responsibility for what she claims are terrible injustices inflicted. Carlson, through Toronto lawyer James Newland, filed a notice of claim against CSC in October 1998. However, that's on hold until the courts deal with a suit filed against CSC and the federal government by another Newland client, Dorothy Proctor. She claims to have been brainwashed at Kingston Prison for Women in 1961 when she was 17.

ROOM FOR HELP FOR CARLSON: LAWYER

Crown wants court to declare
convicted bank robber a dangerous offender
Chronicle Journal, Thunder Bay, Ont.
by Jim Kelly Friday November 5, 1999
Lawyer Norm Williams painted a glowing picture Thursday of his client, convicted bank robber Richard Albert (Ricky) Carlson. "This is a different Carlson from the bank robber," Williams told Mr. Justice Terrence Platana during final submissions on a Crown application that Carlson be declared a dangerous offender. "There's room for help for this guy. This isn't a one-way street. Carlson is not a person who cannot be rehabilitated," said Williams. He described Carlson as a "trustworthy, solid, compassionate and loving person. He's a happy-go-lucky pretty jovial person."Platana interrupted Williams to say it might be difficult to portray Carlson as trustworthy with others members of the public considering his bank robbery conviction. On Jan. 28, 1998 Carlson was found guilty of several offences stemming from an aug. 13, 1992 holdup of a Royal Bank of Canada branch in Thunder Bay. The offences included using a firearm and wearing a disguise. If Platana rules in favour of the Crown, Carlson would receive what amounts to a virtual life time prison sentence. If Platana rejects the application, Carlson is likely to receive a lengthy prison term.
A small band of Carlson's supporters appeared again at the Camelot Street Superior Court of Justice. Carlson, 52, dressed in a grey suit, smiled and waved a couple of times at one of the women. Williams said Carlson is a drug addict but his friends don't see him that way. "They see him as a great guy."
Williams said Carlson has taken rehabilitation programs in prison. He said Carlson is not a violent, person noting he has never had a fight during the 30 years he spent in jail.
On the other hand, Williams conceded Carlson has difficulty controlling his impulses in a stressful situation. Williams urged Platana to accept the testimony of psychologist LDr. Georgio Ilacqua who said earlier that Carlson could one day be safely supervised out of custody. Ilacqua testified Carlson, in his opinion, wouldn't re-enter the criminal justice system if he receives psychiatric care and substance abuse treatment.
Williams said he didn't agree with the testimony of forensic pyshcologist Dr. Thomas McCabe Davidson who said Carlson is a psychopath who is a risk for violent re-offence. The hearing continues today.

PRISON EXPERIMENTS HAUNT INMATES
By Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill
Ottawa Citizen October 13, 1998

Carlson wonders if something more exotic, perhaps even the CIA, is behind what happened to him in Canadian prisons. There is no known evidence to support these theories, but considerable documentation to support some of his other claims. Last month, Carlson was returned to the Thunder Bay jail after 60 days at the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, the country’s maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. He was sent there for a mandatory assessment. Under the provisions for determining dangerous offender status, suspects must be examined by two psychiatrists, one for the Crown, one for the defence. An August assessment from Penetanguishene reads in part that there is “no compelling evidence” Carlson now or ever suffered from a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia. Over the years, many doctors have debated the state of his mental health. Carlson, however, asks what one should call someone who, in the name of science, zaps an inmate with electric shock or gives them hallucinogenic drugs. “The people who say that I’m nuts, would you say (they’re) sane?”

CONVICTED BANK ROBBER CARLSON LAUNCHES APPEAL BID
Chronicle Journal Thunder Bay Ontario 2/2/2000
by Phil Andrews

Convicted Thunder Bay bank robber Richard Albert (Ricky) Carlson has made good on his pledge to seek a new trial on charges that he held up a city Royal Bank of Canada branch in 1992. Carlson 52, filed a motion last week with the Ontario Court of Appeal to consider an appeal of his convictiions in the August 13, 1992 incident.
Carlson was sentenced in December to 21 years in prison for the robbery. He was given credit for 3 ½ years in prison for the robbery. He was given credit for a 3 ½ years served in pretrial custody. On January 28, 1998 a jury found Carlson guilty of armed robbery, using a firearm in the commission of a crime, pointing a firearm and wearing a disguise. Defence lawyer Glenn Sandberg, who represented Carlson during his sentencing said Carlson has submitted written claims to the court of appeal that he should be granted a new trial because of alleged errors made in law by Mr. Justice Terrance Platana during his trial. No date is set for the matter to be heard by the appeal court. Carlson has also applied for Legal Aid assistance to finance the appeal bid. The matter will not likely proceed unless the funding is available. Over the course of Carlson’s trial, his defence team asserted that Carlson wasn’t in Thunder Bay at the time of the robbery. Carlson changed lawyers after his trial and for a short time advised the court he intended to represent himself during sentencing. The province applied unsuccessfully to have Carlson designated a dangerous offender—a finding that could have given Carlson a virtual lifetime sentence. Carlson thanked Platana repeatedly when the application was dismissed. He had previously told Platana he believed his past criminal behaviour was influenced by brainwashing experiments he claims he went through as an inmate in Canadian prisons between 1968 and 1974. No one was injured in the August 13, 1992 robbery. A total of $10,375 was taken. The bank has since closed the north core branch.

Roger Caron
GO BOY!
McGraw Hill Ryerson Press 1978 Toronto
Guelph Reformatory November 1955:

p. 84 “...This is Dr. Bonin. He’s going to be our new resident psychiatrist in charge of our new psychiatric ward. So happens that he has an interesting proposal to offer you, one which you can accept or refuse.” [prisoner Roger Caron was 17 yrs old]
p. 90 “... it was a large windowless laboratory crammed with all sorts of electronic equipment, medical instruments, and an operating table under a powerful lamp. Strapped to the table was a canvas sack the full length of a man’s bodt with a heavy-duty zipper running from head to foot. Standing at one end of the table was the doctor, fiddling around in a preoccupied manner with a rubber oxygen mask and some dials attached to two cylindrical tanks. His gorgeous secretary sat a few feet awau from him on a high stool, poised with a note pad and pencil. Efficient Miss Carter stood at the door with a stethoscope around her neck. What chilled me the most were the six burly guards deployed around the bed flexing their fingers and staring fixedly at me ... She then zippered the bag all the way up to my neck. I was in a straight jacket. At a nod from the shrink the uniformed guards then reached out and gripped firmly various parts of my body in such a way that I was unable to move. Completely immobilised and at the mercy of what I now believed to be a deranged head-shrinker, I started sweating and cursing at the choice I had made weeks earlier ... my eyes widened as the mask descended towards my face ... I tried to remain cool, still cursing myself for being so trusting. The mask clamped firmly over my mouth and nose and suddenly I found that I could not breathe! Thinking that the Doctor goofed and that I was about to suffocate, I tried communicating my panic to Dr. Bonin with my eyes, but his face remained impassive. Then I heard the ominous hissing of gas and still I couldn’t breathe. Horror-stricken, I started thrashing about while the hands that were gripping me squeezed more rightly than ever. There was an eerie buzzing in my ears like an angry horde of wasps trying to chew their way into my brain. And I still couldn’t breathe! My struggle was now taking on a new tempo as a peculiar source of strength began coursing through me making me feel as powerful as the Almighty Himself! The arteries in my neck were swelling to the point of bursting as I exerted even greater force than the hands that were holding me down until it felt like something was going to break. Even through the thick canvas, I could sense their awe and fear as I tossed them about like corks on a rough sea ... the room was spinning around in a maddening circle ...engulfed by a big wave as thick and dark as molasses, a wave that was carrying me off into a shadowy world full of flashing lights ... buzzing sounds ... I was strong ... Their (six guards) hands were slipping and I could hear the canvas tearing as I struggled mightier and mightier ... again I renewed my screaming, so fierce, so unearthly, so profound, that it had to be primeval ... everybody was breathing and perspiring just as heavily as I was ... even Dr. Bonin’s face was flushed and had an awed look ... the doctor reached for his secretary’s notebook and mumbled, “Don’t worry son, the next time will be more moderate.” ... it got more and more turbulent ... seven encounters ... functioning like a zombie ... the doctor tired to calm me down by pointing out that the machine was being dismantled, never to be used again, I had nothing to worry about.”
(period of unconsciousness - came to on Christmas Day)
had smashed both arms through double glass window, attempted escape from prison psychiatric ward and was sent to Limbo Room ... returned to prison population by January

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