I settled down to my work and had a chance to look about me. The prison, a stone building, was on the finest site in New Westminster, a gently sloping eminence overlooking a broad sweep of the Fraser River where it widens to its delta. The prison contained one hundred single cells and the silent system obtained. There was never any overcrowding or haphazard makeshifts. When the cells were all filled, a batch of prisoners was at once shipped away to the eastern prisons at Kingston, Ontario, or Stony Mountain, Manitoba, to make room for newcomers. We were closely watched and guarded by the officers, who were nearly all ex-army and navy men, iron disciplinarians and sticklers for the enforcement of rules. I looked about for some way out of the place, but it seemed hopeless and I gave it up, settling down to do my time.

The prison population came from the four corners of the earth. Sailors and ex-soldiers, deserters from the navy, a few Yanks, fugitives from the American side, Indians from the Arctic Circle brought down by the Mounted Police to do time for violating laws they never could understand, and a sprinkling of Chinamen and Japs. The sixty acres of prison land were farmed intensively, yielding an abundance of fine vegetables, hay, and grain. Clothing, shoes, and socks were made by prisoners. The food was coarse but wholesome. An American prison commissary would not believe a penitentiary could be run without beans. In my two years at this prison I did not see a bean. An English prison warden would not believe a prison could exist without peas. I never saw a pea in an American prison. I never saw a cup of coffee in the place. We had pea “coffee” twice a day. It was made from peas grown on the farm, threshed out on the barn floors with flails, roasted and ground like coffee. It was very nutritious and not at all unpalatable. We had plenty of vegetables, mush and pea soup, lots of bread, not too fresh, and not much meat. The food ration, even to the salt and pepper that seasoned it, was regulated by law. Every prisoner got just what the law allowed him and no more.