For the Museum’s 60th anniversary, we’re looking back at our history – and what better way then by looking at some of the coverage of the Museum in the media over the years. In 1969, William Ramsay interviewed Murray Millar, Superintendent of the Staff College, and visited the Museum; the story ran in the Whig May 24. At the time, the Coach House at Calderwood was being renovated to host the Museum in larger premised and allow more of the public to visit. Before that point, the Museum was appointment only. In the interview, Millar outlined his dream to “establish a museum to record the history of Canadian Penitentiaries.” Ramsay noted it was the first effort in Canada “to preserve Canada’s prison past on a national scale” and that expanding the collection beyond Kingston Penitentiary was a major goal. Millar showed Ramsay parts of the collection that are still important parts of the Museum today: old prison registers “browned with age,” door locks and leg-irons, a tobacco slicer (on display to this day!), contraband weapons and escape tools, and a still used for making moonshine. Noting the ongoing construction of Millhaven at the time, Ramsay concluded that the Museum would be an important part of Kingston as a “penitentiary city – past, present, future.”
