Inside Millhaven Institution with Warden Henry Saulnier.
An interview and a personal tour.
(Note: I conducted this interview on Sept. 8, 2022. It took me a while to get it written and approved)
Millhaven is Ontario’s only maximum-security prison.
I’m here to interview the man in charge, Warden Henry Saulnier. I’ve known Henry for about six years now. I like him. I consider him a friend. To me, he’s Henry.
But what is Warden Henry Saulnier like?
I’m here to interview him on the job and find out. Henry not only accepted my interview request but was gracious enough to offer me a tour of the prison after the interview. He said my copy needed to be approved by Corrections Canada before publication to ensure it didn’t compromise prison security or the safety of his staff. A reasonable requirement that I was happy to comply with.
So, it’s September 8, and I’m waiting on a bench outside his office. Waiting for our 11:00 appointment.
I’d left Port Hope extra early that morning, not wanting to be late. I overshot the mark and arrived in Bath two hours early.
I spent an hour pacing the Bath town park and then reported to the security check desk—in a small building just outside the gates of the institution—at 10:00
“I’m Dean Johnson. I have an 11:00 appointment with the Warden. I thought I’d see if he’s available earlier.” The officer manning the desk flipped through a list on the counter. “Yes. I see your name.” “I’ll call him and see if he’s available now.” No luck.
“Come back at 10:30,” the officer tells me.
10:30. I’m back. The officer phones Henry’s office again. “The Warden is still in his meeting, but he says you can wait for him inside.”
A staff member arrives to escort me. I sign in and walk through the metal detector. Then, a visitor’s badge clipped to my shirt, I follow him toward the gate to the institution. The gateway is a chain link cage with motorized sliding gates on either end. One gate closes before the other one opens.
We walk up to the entrance, my escort swipes his card, and I’m now inside Millhaven Institution.
I sit on the bench outside Henry’s office and wait for him to finish his meeting. Finally, his door flings open.
“Hi, buddy. How are you?” He shakes my hand. The Henry I know.
“Hi, Henry. Sorry, I’m a bit early.”
He laughs. “No worries. I’ll be right with you. I just have to take care of something. You can hang out with the Deputy Warden in his office while you’re waiting.”
It’s finally 11:00, and time for the interview. Henry tells me to come in.
The first thing I notice is his shelves of sports memorabilia and a framed picture of NHL player Josh Anderson with Henry hanging on the wall.
Henry is a sports fanatic. Hockey, in particular. And the Habs are his team. He’d told me he’d given Anderson a tour of Millhaven recently. It was a dream come true for both of them.
“Have a seat,” Henry says and sits down at his table across from me. “Well, what do want to know, Dean?”
“I want to know about your career. How did you get to be the guy in charge of a maximum-security prison?”
“I just worked my way up. I’ve been in corrections for 30 years now. I’ve always loved my job. And I’ve always loved a challenge.”
“But I had a great foundation to start with. I learned a lot from playing sports as a kid. I grew up in the Frankford minor hockey system. I always wanted to be a leader, but I knew how to play my part on a team, whatever it was.”
“And my parents were excellent role models,” he continues. “They worked in a Batawa shoe factory and only had a grade eight education. But my dad worked his way up to senior management. I saw my dad become a leader. I always knew you had to work hard and be respectful. I never forgot where I came from.”
After high school, Henry enrolled in the Law and Security program at Loyalist, intending to become an O.P.P. officer. When he found out there was a hiring freeze, he looked for other options. One day he was in a Frankford laundromat and noticed a corrections officer hanging his shirt on a rack. He decided on the spot that he would become a correctional officer and switched to the corrections stream.
“I wasn’t the greatest student because I was focused on sports, but I stuck with it,” he says. He finished his program and completed two placements at Warkworth Institution. He was hired to work at Warkworth three months after he graduated.
Two years later, he contacted Loyalist and offered to mentor students studying for a career in corrections. “They helped me out. I gave back.” His relationship with Loyalist continues to this day, and this year Loyalist nominated him for the prestigious Premier’s Award in recognition of his years of contribution to their program.
Mentoring is important to him. “I’ve always had a passion for mentoring because I’ve always been blessed with excellent mentors. Pay it forward.”
“As I rose through the ranks, I always mentored those below me in rank.”
And rise through the ranks he did. Corrections Officer. Correctional Manager. Manager Operations. Assistant Warden Operations. Deputy Warden. And finally, in 2021, Warden.
Besides Millhaven and Warkworth, he’s worked at Beaver Creek, Collins Bay, Bath, and Joyceville. He’s also taught Emergency Management and Crisis Management Operations courses across Canada.
He received the Corrections Exemplary Service Medal in 2013.
Corrections is a team sport. And Henry emphasized several times how hard his team worked throughout the pandemic to ensure staff and inmates were safe from Covid— while ensuring that inmate programming and education proceeded with minimal interruption.
Most of the men in Millhaven are serving long sentences, and some will likely never be released. But Henry says that the #1 priority for the institution is still their rehabilitation through education and programming. Every inmate is assessed at the start of their sentence and given a personalized Correctional Plan that outlines what is expected of them. It provides a “roadmap” for them to carry out their sentence. Ultimately, the goal is to return as many of them as possible safely to the community.
Henry stood up suddenly. “I have that other meeting that I can’t postpone. If you want your tour, we have to get going.”
As we walk quickly down the corridor toward the central control post, Henry says, “You have to think of it like a small community. Over 300 men live here, and most of their needs must be met within the walls of the institution.”
The portion of the institution that holds offenders is radial in design. To quote the Millhaven page on the Correctional Service Canada website: “Millhaven Institution is based on a radial design model where offender accommodations are direct observation living units radiating off a central control post. All offender movement is conducted through this central control post.”
Henry wanted to show me as much as possible without interfering with the work of his staff, so we exited and reentered the ends of these radial wings and took several other shortcuts to save time.
This was a little disorienting, and I was running on two hours of sleep. So, it became a bit of a blur. I’ll abandon the attempt at a cohesive narrative at this point and just describe a few of the things I saw. In no particular order. If you’ve watched any prison documentaries, you will be familiar with most of them:
The control room, where the location of every prisoner is tracked at all times. Officers manning this station monitor cameras and computers. Paper strips with the names of offenders who are out of their cells and their location hang on a big board that dominates the room. Like air traffic control for prisoners.
Psychiatric pod. Mentally ill prisoners are kept under special conditions, and their medication is monitored. High needs prisoners. I saw some faces that I’ll simply describe as looking pretty scary to me looking out through the plexiglass windows of their cells.
Observation cells. Inmates who are at risk of self-harm are placed in these bare cells for observation.
The Geriatric pod. Geriatric inmates spend their final days here under medical care.
The gymnasium. Similar to a regular gym but with a second-story observation window that doubles as a gun port in case things get out of control. A reasonably well-equipped weight room adjoins this. Similar to a regular one, except that the plates on the free weights are welded in place to prevent them from being used as weapons.
Prisoner’s visiting area. A bank of phones with a plexiglass barrier. Just like in the movies. One update and a sign of the time: Some had computer terminals in place for supervised and scheduled Zoom calls necessitated by Covid. And in the same area--visiting room where inmates are allowed close contact with their visitors.
Library. A reasonably well-stocked little library. Contained computers with the internet blocked to prevent criminal activity.
The medical unit. To take care of both the routine and emergency medical needs of prisoners. As large, busy, and well-staffed as a rural hospital.
An empty cell. I stood inside one for a minute. Believe me, if you find yourself sentenced to one, you’ll work your Correctional Plan as hard as possible.
Throughout the tour, the main thing that stood out was that most of Henry’s correctional officers, both men, and women, called him “Henry.” They were respectful but obviously comfortable in his presence. Several provided him with updates on their career progress. He was clearly mentoring them and seemed happy to be doing so. Just as he said.
The correctional officers I met during my tour had the same alert demeanor that a police officer has. And like them, they are trained in and authorized to use the necessary and proportionate force required to carry out their duties.
They are engaged in serious business.
As we finished the tour and walked back up the corridor to the visitor’s entrance, we passed an officer using a drug dog to screen a young lady visiting the institution. She looked at me and smiled as the officer said, “Okay, you’re good.”
I thanked Henry for everything and walked out, grateful for the tour and grateful to be free to leave.