October 26, 2026
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CANADALAND
#1458 I Am Made of Scars: The Legacy of Ontario’s Child Prisons
“Every time I feel or hear sirens, I feel like they’re coming for me.” -Daniel Brown, one of the last inmates of Ontario's "training schools"
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Bruce Thorson
Senior Producer
Tristan Capacchione
Producer

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Over 20,000 kids went through Ontario’s “training schools” system. But really they weren’t so much schools as prisons for children ages 8-16. The first of what grew to nineteen of these institutions opened in 1925. They all shut down by 1984.

Daniel Brown was one of the last boys to be declared a ward of the Juvenile Delinquents Act and to serve time in the training schools system and today we tell his story.

NB Parts of this story originally appeared in a Toronto Life story about Daniel. 

 

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Liz Beatty (Reporter), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editing, Sound Design, and Mixing), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)

 

Fact checking by Julian Abraham

Additional music by Audio Network and Tristan Capacchione

Image courtesy of Daniel Brown

 

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