Visitors will be able to follow in the footsteps of some of Canada’s most notorious criminals this weekend.
Starting Saturday with Doors Open Toronto and continuing all summer, guests will have the chance for an exclusive look inside the 145-year-old old Don Jail complex that closed in 1977, from the narrow cells and corridors to the hair-raising path to the gallows.
Chris MacKechnie, a spokesperson for Slingshot Inc., the company promoting the tours, said visitors will be impressed with the building’s “commanding architecture.”
The jail, opened in 1864 and once dubbed the “Palace for Prisoners,” saw at least 34 hangings between the late 1860s and 1962. That ended with the double execution of convicted murderers Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin — the last to suffer that fate in Canada.
