Qualla: Matsqui Institution https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:34:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Matsqui Institution https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution Matsqui Institution: Introduction https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution/ On the night of June 2, 1981, eight staff members were stranded on a roof at Matsqui Institution, and the building beneath them was on fire. Some three hundred men had taken control of the prison and set seven of its buildings alight; the damage would run into millions of dollars. Corporal Patrick Aloysius Kevin McBride went up and brought all eight down. The Governor General decorated him for it - the second time that year he had been honoured for bravery. Forty-odd years later the institution is still there, still medium security, still holding roughly four hundred men on a stretch of Fraser Valley farmland about seventy kilometres east of Vancouver.

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/9/n/matsqui-institution-wp/c29n-matsqui-institution-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Matsqui Institution: Ground the River Gave Back https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution/ The prison sits on Matsqui Prairie, a floodplain pinned between Sumas Mountain to the east and the Mount Lehman uplands to the west. This was never naturally dry land. The Fraser took it back in the great floods of 1894 and again in 1948, drowning Matsqui Village and the farms ar...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/9/n/matsqui-institution-wp/c29n-matsqui-institution-ground-the-river-gave-back.mp3 0:06 2 full Matsqui Institution: Built on a Theory https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution/ Matsqui opened in 1966, and like most institutions built in that decade it reflects a particular conviction about what prisons are for. The general population lives in a three-storey unit organized around a central core of control posts - a design meant to let a small number of o...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/9/n/matsqui-institution-wp/c29n-matsqui-institution-built-on-a-theory.mp3 0:06 3 full Matsqui Institution: The Work of the Place https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution/ What actually happens at Matsqui, day to day, is school and shop work. The institution runs basic education programming and vocational training - the practical skills a man might carry out the gate with him - alongside the correctional programs that parole decisions turn on. It a...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/9/n/matsqui-institution-wp/c29n-matsqui-institution-the-work-of-the-place.mp3 0:06 4 full Matsqui Institution: What the Record Holds https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution/ The written history of a working prison is not a comfortable read. Matsqui's public record is largely a chronology of lockdowns: searches that turn up contraband tobacco and phones, packages thrown over the fence line, homemade alcohol, weapons, assaults, overdoses, men asking to...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/9/n/matsqui-institution-wp/c29n-matsqui-institution-what-the-record-holds.mp3 0:06 5 full Matsqui Institution: Seen From the Air https://qualla.com/matsqui-institution/ From above, the place is oddly unremarkable. Long low roofs, a running track, a graded yard, everything set inside a double perimeter fence and surrounded by the green geometry of berry fields and dairy pasture. Matsqui is one of several federal institutions clustered in this cor...

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]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/2/9/n/matsqui-institution-wp/c29n-matsqui-institution-seen-from-the-air.mp3 0:06 6 full