Prison farm cattle to be sold despite protests
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 | 11:46 AM ET
CBC News
Police allow a cattle truck to pass protesters at the Frontenac Institution in Kingston, Ont., Monday. (CBC)An auction of cattle raised on a Kingston, Ont., prison farm that many people have been trying to prevent is scheduled to take place in Waterloo Tuesday in spite of major protests over the last two days.
Three hundred dairy cows are up for sale at the Ontario Livestock Exchange. They're from a prison farm that for more than 100 years was part of Frontenac Institution.
The government plans to replace the farm with other programs that it says are more relevant in today's world.
For the past two days, people have staged protests near the Kingston farm in an effort to stop the animals from being taken away, part of a campaign against the farm closure that's lasted more than a year.
But there wasn't much protesters gathered outside the prison grounds Monday could do to stop the transfer of cattle. A massive police presence prevented them from blocking the passage of cattle trucks as they had managed to do on Sunday.
So, they sang songs and tried to keep up morale.
But Dianne Dowling, a spokeswoman for a group of prison farm supporters, realized by mid-afternoon they'd lost the fight
"I'm very, very sad," Dowling said. "My heart is broken about the loss of this program. My heart's broken for the cows. They've got a five- or six-hour drive, and the sale, and who knows what after that."
She and her colleagues have spent the past 18 months trying to save the dairy operation at the prison.
Marches, meetings with MPs and speeches on Parliament Hill were not enough to prevent the closure of the farm.
The Correctional Services Department said other programs would offer more effective training for inmates.
Janet Creasy, one of the protesters, pointed out that Frontenac supplied milk for other institutions
"Those inmates are feeding many prison communities," she said. "They're supporting themselves. They're doing something with their time. They're not sitting on their hands doing nothing."
Corrections officials haven't yet announced a program to replace the farms.
Dowling said, for inmates who worked on the farm, one of their first jobs will be to tear down the buildings they worked in.
