Sitting along the major road between Merrickville and Burritt's Rapids, on the north shore of the Rideau River, is a facility surrounded by 21 foot fences, and marked by no stopping signs along the highway. The facility is large and imposing... which is what one would expect of a prison.
Location | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Burritts Rapids | ||||||
(Lanark County, Ontario, Canada) | ||||||
Built :: Closed | Status | Difficulty | ||||
1947 :: 2004 | Demolished | ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ | ||||
Hazards Risk | Security Risk | AUE Rating | ||||
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ | ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ | ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ | ||||
Hazard Observations | Security Observations | |||||
None Specified | None Specified |
The Rideau Correctional & Treatment Centre originally opened in 1947 as a minimum security institute with an agricultural component; to the north of the property a farm was utilized to teach inmates farming skills that they could further use upon their release.
Over the years, the population of Rideau changed, and the facility adapted to serve the new population. The agricultural component of the rehabilitation was phased out, and the facility itself was converted from a minimum security institute to a medium security one in 1985. At least two new buildings were added with this conversion - the medium security block and the brand new minimum security building, added on the northern edge of the property.
The beginning of the end for Rideau occurred in 1996, when the province of Ontario launched the Infrastructure Renewal Program to update the aging penal system. Many facilities in the province were marked for closure, with Rideau being marked for being "too small and too old".
Rideau managed to survive a further 8 years sitting on death row, but like many who found themselves there, it wasn't able to dodge the end. When the new Central East Correctional Centre (known to many as the Lindsay Superjail) was opened in 2003, many of the inmates from Rideau were shipped out to the new facility. Once this process concluded in 2004, Rideau was shuttered.
In 2006, though, the City of Ottawa looked into purchasing the old institute from the province, for the purpose of converting it into a treatment facility for a youth drug treatment centre. While Ottawa did get two facilities, neither of them were on the Rideau Correctional grounds.
As such, the facility still sits dormant, owned by the province which has no plans for the imposing but decaying property.