In this episode, we continue our discussion with Tim and Doug, both lifers, recorded at Kirkpatrick House in Ottawa. In this part, they share advice about how to keep motivated, prepare for life in the community, and cope with the challenges of life on the outside. While Tim continues to do excel in the community, we were disheartened to learn that Doug has had his parole suspended and is back in custody between the recording and airing of this episode. A life sentence truly is a life sentence and we wish him all the best.

Tim and Doug are both lifers, having been sentenced to life in a Canadian criminal court, and are both now facing challenges on the outside after prison, both living at Kirkpatrick House in Ottawa, and both are now doing well.

Tim committed his crime when he was just a juvenile and spent the first two years in youth custody before being transferred to an adult facility. Doug is an Indigenous man who has already served 34 years of his life-sentence both on the inside and out, and that has included trips back to prison for various breaches.

Now, Tim stays busy, all the time, with a combination of work and school. Doug does enjoy his employment, but he prefers to fill the rest of his time with friends, cultural activities, and fishing.

No two stories are the same and in this episode we look at the different paths two men took to wind up in the same place, and how they continue to pursue a life on the outside.

Rick Sauvé truly deserved to be honoured with the Ed McIsaac Human Rights in Corrections Award. Not only did he win voting rights for prisoners in the Supreme Court, we learn in this episode of his commitment to helping prisoners. Among other contributions, Rick has provided peer support through LifeLine, assisted at more than 400 parole board hearings and helped prisoners leave gangs. As a person who has been behind bars and successfully lives under sentence in the community, Rick has terrific insights into the challenges fellow prisoners face and significant credibility with them. He shares information about the prison programs he has delivered and the other efforts he has made to help those still behind bars find their way.

In Canada, a life-sentence does actually mean life. It might not all be spent behind bars but someone serving a life-sentence is never truly free. In 1978, Rick Sauvé was then a member of the Satan’s Choice MC who was convicted of first degree murder in the killing of a rival gang member, a conviction he contests.

Rick has twice taken the battle for prisoner voting rights to the Supreme Court of Canada, and won both times before earning parole after serving 17 years of his life sentence under the now defunct “Faint Hope Clause”. For winning voting rights for prisoners and his work coaching other “lifers” he earned the Ed McIsaac Human Rights in Corrections Award, the first time a former prisoner had ever won the humanitarian award.

In this episode, Rick talks about his own experience as a “lifer” and about the challenges and conditions that anyone serving a life-sentence faces, knowing full-well that a breach of any of those conditions could land them swiftly back in prison. In the next episode, we discuss the programs that Rick provides, designed to help lifers, inside and out, cope with the stresses of their lives.

Imagine a situation where you fall asleep on the city bus and don’t wake up until the end of the line, on the other side of town, a long way from home. It might be a little scary, but thankfully you can buzz up an Uber, call a cab, call a friend, or just hop back on a different bus heading the other way. Heck, you might even be able to walk back.

Now imagine that sleep you took was a 15-year long nightmare of violence and hopelessness, and instead of being on the wrong side of town, you were in a completely different province with no idea how you were going to get home.

Jamaal Desmond spent 15 years in Canada’s federal prison system - the vast majority of that time in maximum-security facilities. Near the end of his sentence he was transferred out of province to New Brunswick to face assault charges surrounding a prison fight he didn’t start. He was eventually released from a provincial facility in New Brunswick with nothing. No parole or probation officer. No finances. No family close by, and no way to get back to his home in Quebec.

There isn’t a simple or generic solution for succeeding “on the outside”, and what works well for one person won’t for the next. Co-hosts Catherine Latimer, Executive Director of the John Howard Society of Canada, and Lawrence Da Silva - a man who served 19 years in Canada’s penitentiary system, explore concepts around successful release and the problems and stigmas attached to community reintegration.

Lawrence shares the story of his own release, three-and-a-half years ago, at the expiry of his warrant. This meant no parole and no community support. In fact, he was met by the police at the gate of the prison, placed in handcuffs, and brought to court to have further constraints placed on his liberties not based on what he had done but on the fear of what he might do in the future. (s. 810.2 of CCC) With heightened police scrutiny and without continuity of needed medicines, facing reintegration was a daunting challenge particularly for someone who hadn’t seen modern society in nearly two decades.

Those men and women who have made the journey from incarceration back to the real world have a wealth of knowledge, personal insight, and experience to offer, both to those coming out of prison, and those outsiders looking in trying to find their own answers.