“‘God,’ I thought as my vision blurred, ‘wipe these memories from my mind.’”
Whether you think of it as social commentary, true-crime, or schlock jour“‘God,’ I thought as my vision blurred, ‘wipe these memories from my mind.’”
Whether you think of it as social commentary, true-crime, or schlock journalism, Roger Caron’s second memoir, Bingo!, is a legendary piece of Canadian publishing history. Admittedly, the book – like its author – is unsophisticated and rough around the edges. However, what Caron lacks in literary style, he makes up for in his unique sense of perspective, and his unflinching duty to bear witness.
In plain language, Caron offers a first-hand account of the unrelenting brutalities inside Kingston Penitentiary, which culminated in the explosive riot of April 1971. If you have the stomach for it, Bingo! is an invaluable resource for anyone researching the history of human rights, criminal justice, and labour movements in post-war Canada. Caron does a particularly good job outlining some of the day-to-day issues that sparked the powder keg. In terms of prison reform, it was interesting to see what changed (and what stayed the same) since those harrowing days in 1971.
Against popular belief at the time, Kingston Penitentiary recovered from the horrors of the riot and remained fully operational for another fourty-two years. Yet the fate of the institution was sealed after 1971 – its pulse beginning to fade; its reputation tarnished by well over a century of controversy and legal drama. When Kingston Penitentiary closed its doors for the last time in 2013, Canada’s most notorious prison finally died, not with a violent spasm, but with a pathetic whimper. Perhaps Caron was correct when he observed that, in the spirit of Neil Young: “[…] old penitentiaries never die, they just rust away.”...more
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