When I completed my interviews with inmates and staff at Matsqui Institution, plus a good deal of reading, I wrote the paper detailing my findings concerning inmate culture. As requested at the outset, I gave prison Superintendent Doug McGregor a copy. He was at his desk when I entered his office, his white shirt open at the top button as usual. I told him about M2W2 and inquired about bringing the program into Matsqui. He asked, “do you consider this to be the answer to recidivism?”

I’d had several discussions with Doug over the past three months and felt he was genuinely open to new approaches. Almost certainly he wanted also to assess the level of understanding our organization had concerning prisoners and their rehabilitation. “At the beginning of my experience at Oakalla,” I replied, “I naively thought that surely friendship with a reputable citizen would persuade a man that life offers a much richer experience than crime and prison.

I thought it might be pretty straight forward and simple. Now I’m beginning to understand that in most cases releasing a man from prison doesn’t also release him from his criminal thinking.” Doug leaned forward, listening intently, not interrupting.

“Our sponsors do offer friendship,” I continued. “We consider it a critical component in rebuilding anyone’s life, whether in prison or in the community. We assign a trustworthy man to sponsor one inmate. The sponsor typically visits the inmate once every two weeks, more often if he chooses to. When the man becomes eligible for passes to the community, the sponsor may invite him to his home to meet his family and enjoy a meal. He will also introduce the man to people in the community. This helps him feel more at ease with law abiding citizens when he is released. We do recognize, however, that our approach is only one aspect of the solution.”

About a week later Ray Coles, the M2W2 executive director at that time, met with Doug and several senior prison staff. At this meeting we were given the green light to bring the program to Matsqui Institution.

Ray Coles asked me to develop the Matsqui program. This was a volunteer position and I continued operating a front end loader and driving a dump truck, as I had on a part time basis during the SFU years. Working with the prison’s community liaison director, I scheduled a “get acquainted” meeting, which was attended by 21 inmates.

When I entered the room, my attention was immediately drawn to a squat, burly man sitting at the rear of the room. With thick arms folded tightly across his barrel chest, and a skeptical frown on his face, his appearance was intimidating. Had he come to disrupt?

In spite of my apprehensions, the meeting produced no fireworks, only a lot of questions. None from the burly dour man in the back row. When I received a stack of eleven applications for a sponsor, I was surprised to see that this man, Roy, had applied. I was pleased but not surprised to note that Albert, the grey haired man in the hobby shop also wanted a friend from outside the fences.

I immediately began searching for men with a track record of integrity. Men who would commit irrevocably to a relationship and follow through. The inmates we’d be working with had been deceived and lied to much of their lives. We wanted to show them another, more fulfilling way to live.

Often I approached a man individually, explained the program and invited him to visit an inmate with me. The men I hoped to enlist usually already had a full schedule, but almost without exception, they accompanied me and I introduced them to a man not receiving visits. Among the community men were Andy, a top selling realtor, Rudy, a senior secondary school teacher and coach, and Reinhart, a successful entrepreneur. There were also tradesmen, farmers, laborers and retirees. After visiting a man behind bars with me, they were almost invariably hooked. Sponsoring an inmate seemingly provided them with a sense of mission.

It would prove to be a challenging mission. For young inmates especially, life in prison was a boot camp in crime that indoctrinated them with criminal thinking and attitudes. These had become deeply lodged in their subconscious and governed their responses to knotty life issues. The men we sent into prison would need to learn patience, seek wisdom and discernment, and exercise resolve. When it became extra tough, some sponsors elected to look up and request a divine spark of inspiration and guidance.

Inmates at Matsqui Institution were doing federal time (sentences of two years or more). Often this longer time span enabled inmates and sponsors to develop relationships where there was a measure of trust. We found that when these caged men grasped that their sponsor was a friend, they considered this an opportunity to divulge long hidden secrets from what was almost invariably a sordid past.

Accounts of turbulent family dynamics frequently dismayed us. They also helped us understand why their history was so cluttered with bitterness, anger and despair. Turmoil in their home had denied them an opportunity to lay the foundation for a stable future. Because I interviewed each inmate who applied for a sponsor, I heard chilling stories sufficient to crush a man’s spirit.

Listening to these men, I realized my childhood home had been a safe haven. I was sustained by an abundance of encouragement, love and a tranquil atmosphere. I never returned home knowing my dad would give me a beating for being out too late. Realizing that most sponsors had been blessed with a similarly peaceful upbringing, I wondered how we could possibly bridge the emotional and psychological chasm that stretched like a minefield between us.

Roy, who had sat at the back of the room with arms crossed in the first meeting, had not fared well from his earliest days. His father had been a small time crook, shunted from one prison to another, just bumping purposelessly through life. He had married a second time and the step mother developed an immediate and intense dislike for Roy. She hounded his father relentlessly to disown him. The lack of constructive attention by his father, who couldn’t stay out of prison, and the toxic harassment by his step mother convinced Roy he was worthless. Unwise decisions and actions had persuaded him all he could look forward to was more painful, demoralizing stumbles. He had come to view life through a bleak distorted prism.

It was the hope of our organization that by providing an inmate with a friend in the local community, he would begin to believe life offered more than a series of failures. To this end I matched Roy with Walter, a successful poultry farmer. Walter and Helen immediately began including Roy in their family activities.

Like most men we sponsored, Roy became surprisingly protective of our organization. He didn’t want to besmirch our reputation by escaping while on a pass with Walter. Recognizing this, Matsqui decision makers granted him a number of passes. Walter and family took him along to social events, community functions, church services, and more. Roy especially enjoyed Helen’s invitations to dinner in their home.

In a conversation with Walter and myself, Roy referred to the step mother’s attempts to dislodge him from the family. “My father was in the slammer too much to ever get around to disowning me,” he recalled, “but my stepmother was a determined scheming woman. She made life unbearable for me. When I was eleven I started running away and stealing. I was placed in one detention centre after another.”

He paused a moment as though trying to decide if he should say more. Then, with a rueful grin he added, “I guess you could say that in the end she did get what she wanted.”

Roy’s life trajectory was similar to that of many inmates, although the details often differed. As a child and youth his spirit had been crushed repeatedly by rejection, neglect and failure. Now in an adult body, in many ways he was still just a confused kid. The years behind bars and fences had given him the mental and emotional tools to survive and thrive in confinement, but not in the larger society. He was desperately attempting to claw his way out of the fog that engulfed him. He craved the freedom and sense of fulfillment he recognized in people beyond the fences.

As sponsors we knew this would be a journey with many pitfalls. We would have to grow in maturity and inner strength, so that in us the men we sponsored would have a credible example of how to achieve a fulfilling life.