As in past years, four young people have again spent their summer in jail in L’Orignal.

No, they are not criminals, and the L’Orignal Old Jail ceased being a correctional facility in 1998. They are summer students at the facility, which is now a popular museum and historic site.

University of Ottawa Students Émilie Fournier of Hawkesbury and Adele Sauvé of Rockland are the new summer employees at the old jail. They join Sara-Maude Sirois and Ben Inskip of L’Orignal who also worked at the jail in 2023, proving there is some level of recidivism at the facility.

During the summer, the students have been welcoming visitors who come to the museum to learn about the jail’s past and the history of corrections. The L’Orignal Old Jail is the oldest in Ontario and second-oldest in Canada, so it provides an excellent example of nearly 200 years of crime and punishment dating back to the British colonial days.

Fournier said on average, they have been giving six visitor tours each day this summer.

“July was our busiest season,” Sauvé said.

Many of the visitors are families, including grandparents taking grandchildren sightseeing.

Others are tourists who enjoy touring former jails.

“Sometimes it’s people who actually visit prisons,” Fournier said.

International visitors to the jail this summer have been from France, Switzerland, and New Zealand.

Tourists who visit the jail also often inquire about what other sights there are to see nearby.

This summer, the old jail has hosted events with live musical entertainment and a series of haunted tours with attempts to detect paranormal activity on the premises.

Sauvé said that during one of the haunted tours, they used a device called a “spirit box,” which uses AM and FM radio frequencies to detect supposed paranormal activity. She said a couple of words were detected through the device.

“It’s 200 years old and we’ve had a lot of deaths, including five hangings,” remarked Fournier.

The summer students at the L’Orignal Old Jail have nearly finished doing their time for this season, but they have also been assisting with ideas and preparations for activities to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the jail in 2025.