Hello.
I am standing right outside at the Hostelling International Ottawa Jail Hostel
here in Ottawa Canada.
I'm here with Hostelling International Canada
and I am gonna show you this hostel which is a jail from the 1800s
which has been converted into an awesome hostel
and I want to show you around.
This accommodations tour is going to be
a little bit different than what I usually do
because one of the employees here
is gonna show us around and tell us a little bit about the history of the jail.
Coming here we have the entrance,
here is the lobby
where everybody registers and gets their keys for their room.
There are eight different levels.
This level here,
we have the reception area which is the lobby where people check in.
This is how the original prisoners used to get from one place to the other
so the court used to be the courthouse
if you were guilty they would bring you from the courthouse
they would bring you through underneath the street blindfolded
and you wouldn't know how you got to the jail.
This is a solitary confinement.
You'd be kept for 23 hours and 45 minutes, every day,
naked, chained up on these links right here.
So, very brutal place.
If you see right here this is one of the original bits of graffiti
that was probably carved with a fingernail.
So, this is Leo, right here,
so, whoever Leo was, one of the original guests, he's left his mark.
One of the reasons this place got shut down
was because the guards really didn't follow the law.
So, what was law and what actually happened, two very different things.
On the second floor here we have the kitchen
and then over here we have the common area,
where breakfast is usually served.
You can just come down here with your laptop
and get some stuff done.
The higher you were in the jail was the more sever your sentence
and more severe your crime.
All the drunks in Canada,
you know, almost people who had a lot of debt
we're kept down here.
And upstairs were the real hardened criminals.
Known colloquially as that border hole.
So, this is a way that a guard could stand on the other side,
keep an eye on things,
you know, make sure there's no riotous behavior going down.
And that way if anyone threw anything,
it'd have to be a really, really good shot
to just throw a fork at that thing.
The guards wore black leather shoes,
the inmates were white paper shoes
so, this is a way that they can keep
how many people are on each floor.
The anti suicide bars, probably guess what they're for.
And they weren't originally put in,
it was actually because there was a riot that broke up,
and the guards were thrown from the eighth floor all the way down.
So, like a lot of things,
the protection was for the guards more than the inmates.
Not a lot of thought were into the protection of the inmates in those days.
Every room used to be a cell
and has been converted into a room
and has a bed and all the amenities that you might need,
they have communal showers and communal bathrooms here.
Now, we are about to see the cells
as they were originally before they were converted into rooms.
They didn't actually had beds for about 28 years after they opened the jail,
so, it'd look very similar to this.
I'm going to give you a preview of what my room is like.
Here are all of the rooms.
So, this is my room.
608.
This is the room that I slept in last night.
Because there are no windows here
I slept really well, it was very dark and it was cozy,
and I had really, really deep sleep.
But since this was a jail,
it was designed so that every sound would echo,
so, you hear everything.
Upon registering they actually give you earplugs,
if noise bothers you then you could just pop those into your ears
which I did.
If you want to take a pic of an original cell,
hasn't been touched, painted or anything.
This is it.
So, it has held condemned men in the past.
And that's really pretty much what it looked like.
The first person who was executed here, his name's Patrick Whelan,
he is our most famous inmate,
he's the alleged assassin of Darcy McGee, Thomas Darcy McGee.
You started off in this cell back here.
As your sentence progressed you move to this one and then this one,
and then this is the last one before the gallows.
The idea being, when you were having to go to the gallows
you had to walk by the other man on these very creaky floors
and they would have to witness their fate before them.
These steel walls
they were put up specifically for Patrick Whelan
because the government had to show this was a guy, a dangerous man
whose friends could blow that up with dynamite at any moment.
So, this door actually is the big door
of the last functioning gallows in North America, or Canada I should say.
Back then open up these doors, right here,
you know, executions back in those days were public
get rope right here,
and, you know, this is where the body would come out.
As you might imagine, there are paranormal stories here and rumors,
and people like to talk.
We've got Ouija board at the front desk
if you ever want to try and talk with them.
They're are the happy variety, these aren't your poltergeists,
these are I think probably pretty content ghosts.
We actually had APTN in here not too long ago.
It was sort of like, it's a ghost investigation show
but with an Aboriginal context,
and they came in, had like an elder come in with them as well
and they did kind of like a ceremony out here for the ghosts
and they were like, So, just before we do the ceremony
do you want us to banish the ghosts or you want them around?
And I'm like, No, keep the ghosts.
-Keep on, yeah. -Yeah, they make us a lot of money.
You've got to keep the ghosts.
The last night I spend the night here and the lights started to flicker
and there was some screaming.
It was a very interesting night.
That is it for my tour of the Ottawa Jail Hostel
with Hostelling International Canada.
I am on a week long road trip with these guys,
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I hope that you enjoyed this video.
I thought this hostel was super interesting and I wanted to share with you.
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For now I am going to go.
So, I will see you when I see you, bye!
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