July 30th 2008, 4:35 in the afternoon. I am here in Cobourg, Ontario which is a beautiful country town about 100 kilometers east of Toronto. We are doing a little Kawartha Lake’s tour and I am taking my European friends actually on a little Lake Ontario tour first. We have seen Port Hope and now we are seeing Cobourg and this is very interesting here because this is part of the King George Inn and I have just been told actually that this building used to be a jail. So let's check that out, I am going to take you downstairs where the jail cells are, Cobourg Jail, look at that, very, very interesting.
So this is the King George Inn and here is the nice bartender, that told us about the jail cells and when you go in here, you can already see that this is part of the jail installation, here is a nice little sitting area. And what do we have here, we have washrooms here, but the washrooms -- look at that. This is men’s washroom; I know I am not supposed to be in here but I am nosy, what can we do?
So we have women's washroom, no there is no women’s washroom? What’s in here, see this is part of the other -- oh! this must be the ladies washroom, see. Here is the washroom here and it indeed has the jail cells, look at that, that is fascinating. I have never seen that, let me get back out here. See, all the jail doors and let me go downstairs now.
And look at the jail exhibit, okay. Here to here. Let's see where this is going to take us, alright, wow! So I am in the basement now of the King George Inn, this is cell block commitment. Solitary confinement. My god! I didn’t realize that they had a jail here and there are paintings in here of inmates, inmates making phone calls, this is fascinating. This is another jail cell that’s now some sort of a doctors office, what else? Here is another jail cell, oh! look at the concrete white bed, wow. But no -- washroom, Oh! it was the washroom, that was like a toilet, no? Interesting, I visited Alcatraz earlier this year so these definitely look at this, this doesn't look like a washroom, I don’t think or toilet.
Anyway, so this is the jail at the bottom of the King George Inn which today now I think has something like nine rooms or something or 20 rooms. Oh! What’s down here? Oh! This is a nice -- you can tell it, it was definitely a jail. Everything has the metal bars with it, so let me go upstairs now and I am just going to briefly talk to the bartender. Is this where I came from actually, yeah, that’s where I came from. So, let me go back up and interview the bartender.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services