The Prison Book Club

The Prison Book Club came about after an indecent in London. While living in London, Ann Walmsley was brutally mugged just outside her own home. The attack shook her belief in the fundamental goodness of people and left her so shaken she was unable to walk down the street alone for some time. A few years later, now returned to Canada, her friend Carol Finlay asked her to participate in a book club in a men's medium security prison. Ann's curiosity and desire to be of service eventually overcame her anxiety and fear and she signed on. For eighteen months, Ann accompanied Carol to a remote building at Collins Bay, meeting with heavily tattooed book club members WITHOUT the presence of guards or security cameras. Unlike the book clubs she participated in outside of prison, there were no wine and cheese, no nice furnishings, nor superficial chat about jobs or recent vacations. And yet, the prison book club proved to be a place to share ideas, learn about each other, and regain humanity.For the inmates, the books were rare prized possessions and the meetings an oasis of safety and a respite from isolation in an otherwise hostile environment. And their responses to the books were sincere and multifacited. Discussions about the obstacles the characters faced revealed glimpses of their own struggles, sometimes devastating and sometimes comic. Reading a wide variety of books—The Grapes of Wrath, The Cellist of Sarajevo, Outliers to Infidel, etc.—the discussions became a launching point for revealing conversations about loss, anger, redemption, heroism and loneliness.