OttawaThirty-five people who died on the job are remembered at a somber site in Kingston, Ont.Families of the fallen spent decades pushing for a place to remember their loved onesDan Taekema · CBC News · Posted: Nov 07, 2025 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Dave St. Onge, curator of Canada’s Penitentiary Museum, stands in front of a memorial in Kingston, Ont., that honours Correctional Service Canada staff who died in the line of duty. (Dan Taekema/CBC)Thirty-five faces stare from the stone walls of a memorial outside Correctional Service Canada’s (CSC) training academy in Kingston, Ont.Each image and name is a tribute to the life and sacrifice of a staff member who died in the line of duty.It’s a somber place where surviving relatives can sit and remember their loved ones.”It offers some assurance that their family member will not be forgotten,” said Dave St. Onge. “This will endure well beyond our lives and will be a place of memorial.”The long-awaited monument was officially unveiled during a ceremony at the end of October, but its story began long before.The memorial in Kingston, Ont., includes the names and faces of 35 CSC staff members. (Dan Taekema/CBC)St. Onge, curator of Canada’s Penitentiary Museum, remembers looking out a window in November 1994 and seeing Daphne Jenkins and her brother, Michael Wentworth, holding a lonely vigil outside the gates of Kingston Penitentiary.Their father, William Wentworth, had been stabbed and killed inside the prison 33 years before — a crime that never resulted in a conviction.The memorial honours CSC staff members who lost their lives while on the job. (Dan Taekema/CBC)St. Onge said that annual family gathering grew into a grassroots committee, and decades later resulted in a national monument to the fallen.”I would never have thought, years ago, when I did the picket at the Pen that it would lead to this,” said Jenkins in a media release. “I come and sit here on the bench … and I see my dad’s picture and I think ‘It’s really real.'”Chris Bucholtz, Ontario regional president for the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, told CBC it’s important to have a place where staff and their families can pay their respects to their own.”It’s definitely very deep and very meaningful for the correctional officers,” he said. ” It’s a very dangerous profession.”‘They went off to work and didn’t make it home’While prisons do have memorials inside their walls, there was no place dedicated to just CSC where the public to gather, St. Onge explained.”Unlike the military cenotaphs and memorials across the country, these folks did not go off to war. They went off to work and didn’t make it home,” he said.The first, Henry Traill, was killed in 1870. The most recent, Lesa Zoerb, died in 2018.Henry Traill, left, was the first CSC member to be killed while on duty. He died in 1870. (Dan Taekema/CBC)In cases where staff members died in the same incident, their tributes have been placed side by side.”I feel a sense of pride and satisfaction that these people who gave so much … will be remembered,” said St. Onge, who is also a member of the memorial committee.Years of planning went into every detail of the memorial. Its circular shape mirrors a guard tower, with the outer wings curling in to resemble an embrace.Staff who lost their lives at institutions in Western Canada are on the western wall, mirrored by their eastern colleagues on the opposite wing, with Ontarians scattered among them.St. Onge said the outer walls were intentionally left blank, but he hopes they stay that way.Benches offer a place for family members to sit and remember their loved ones. (Dan Taekema/CBC)Stones from each of CSC’s five regions across the country rest below flags flapping in the wind.A bell from Stony Mountain Institution in Manitoba sits in the centre, behind it a wall bearing different CSC shields from over the years.The words, “fallen but never forgotten, immortal sons and daughters,” are carved in the rock.A site close to CSC’s past, and its futureThe location of the memorial was also intentional, with a view of the old Kingston Penitentiary in the distance and the academy nearby, so new recruits can learn about CSC history.St. Onge said cadets will care for the memorial and raise its flags each day.”We want to to ingrain in them the pride and and respect for these cases, and for the job that they’re entering into,” he said.St. Onge said staff at the CSC’s national training academy will care for the memorial. (Dan Taekema/CBC)ABOUT THE AUTHORDan Taekema is CBC’s reporter covering Kingston, Ont. and the surrounding area. He’s worked in newsrooms in Chatham, Windsor, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa. You can reach him by emailing daniel.taekema@cbc.ca.Follow @DanTaekema on Twitter
New memorial honours Correctional Service of Canada staff who died in the line of duty
