OAKALLA - telling a prison's story

An important milestone was reached this week in the pre-production phase of our film THE GHOSTS OF OAKALLA. - I have finished editing a ten minute short entitled simply OAKALLA, which draws from interviews I conducted with former prison staff and authorities on the old penitentiary. Copies of the preview DVD will go out next week to key resource people and supporters of our project as this film will need to continue drawing from their energy and goodwill as we progress into 2010.

The initial round of interviews went very well and I am pleased to include three expert voices in this first film. Viewers get a big taste of conditions which existed at Oakalla and which often made the institution boil over. There is also an examination of the contentious relationship of a the infamous prison complex and its "long suffering" host city - Burnaby. It was essential for me to research and achieve a thorough grounding in people and events before I develop a script of depth, which must explore some of the most divisive social and political issues in British Columbia history - to set the stage for old ghosts to appear and tell their stories.

Participants in this first OAKALLA video include:

Earl Andersen was a guard at Oakalla in the 1980s and now serves as an NCO on the Vancouver police force. He was on staff during the New Year 1988 mass escape and is the author of the most complete history of Oakalla, which is entitled A HARD PLACE TO DO TIME.

Derek Corrigan was a corrections officer who later became a lawyer, by way of UBC Law School. He was a Burnaby Alderman at the time of the 1988 breakout and was an aggressive Civic spokesman on the issue of shutting Oakalla down. He is currently Mayor of Burnaby and is still the loudest voice opposing any form of Provincial Remand facility in his city.

Tom Gooden is Assistant Curator at the Burnaby Village Museum, and is an authority on Oakalla property and its surviving artifacts. The village, which is frequently used as a period set by the movie industry, is a "living history" museum on the shore of Deer Lake, adjacent to the former Oakalla prison property.

THE GHOSTS OF OAKALLA is being shot in HD video but I recently spoke to a filmmaker who dimly recalls a student project being shot about twenty years ago... she thought in VHS format. If anyone could turn that dangle into hard information, I would certainly appreciate an email. I am eager to source footage from Oakalla's entire lifespan 1912-1991, be it silent celluloid or amateur VHS tape, especially anything taken "inside".

Documenting memories of Oakalla prison 1912-1991

It is the common verdict that all prisons and jails are dangerous, frightening places and most of our communities simply will not consider hosting one. Yet there have been fewer than a half dozen prisons in all of Canadian history which truly deserve to be labeled "infamous". American penal history has its Alcatraz, its Leavenworth, Sing Sing, Folsom, San Quentin and many more. In Canada the most feared prison was the "super-maximum" called Millhaven, built outside of Kingston, Ontario. Here on the Pacific Coast no prison was more "infamous" than Oakalla, in Burnaby.

The statistics for Oakalla hint at the horror and decades of unrelenting pain. There were 44 official executions (hangings) ... 890 escapes between 1940-1990 and a score of full scale riots. There were also dozens of suicides and a few thousand suicide attempts, during the prison's last decades of operation.
A 1987 aerial photo of the main hall of the Oakalla prison complex in Burnaby, B.C., near Vancouver. Oakalla was completely demolished in 1992 at the insistence of the municipal government, and replaced by 531 "luxury" condo townhouses and rental apartments. It has been suggested that the ghosts of the men executed at Oakalla still haunt the hillside property. Research for THE GHOSTS OF OAKALLA has uncovered many extraordinary and compelling stories of its desperate inmates.

There have been just a handful of books published about Oakalla Prison and Earl Andersen's HARD PLACE TO DO TIME (1993) is probably the best of the bunch. Ironically, given the fact that Oakalla was always in the news, there have been no documentary films produced on its history or its incredible inmate population. Well we are now addressing that lack of foresight because time is running out. The survivors are dying off and living memory has become dull. Pre-production is underway and we will have an HD video short ready for viewing by mid-August. Any person or group with an interest in viewing THE GHOSTS OF OAKALLA should send me their contact information.

The isolation unit of the infamous Oakalla Prison in Burnaby, B.C. The institution had a fascinating and deeply troubled history. It housed a Who's Who of British Columbia criminals and political prisoners.

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