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Dorchester Penitentiary opens in New Brunswick

When
1880
Where
Dorchester, New Brunswick
Episodes
1

Dorchester Penitentiary opened on 14 July 1880 in Dorchester, New Brunswick, as a maximum-security facility. Located on a hill overlooking the Memramcook River valley, it is a Canadian federal corrections facility. It is currently operated by the Correctional Service of Canada and handles medium-security offenders in Atlantic Canada.

Episodes

  1. 14 July 1880 · Dorchester, New BrunswickOpening of Dorchester Penitentiary

    Dorchester Penitentiary opened on 14 July 1880 as a maximum-security facility in Dorchester, New Brunswick.

Background and detail

Background. Dorchester is a community in Westmorland County, New Brunswick, Canada. The village was named for Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester, by 1825. The Correctional Service of Canada operates a prison complex in the village, which includes the Dorchester Penitentiary and the Westmorland Institution.

Opening. The facility was opened on 14 July 1880 as a maximum-security penitentiary. It was situated on a hill overlooking the Memramcook River valley. It is the second oldest federal corrections facility in Canada still in operation, following the closure of Kingston Penitentiary in 2013.

Operations. Dorchester Penitentiary is a Canadian federal corrections facility. It handles all medium-security offenders in the federal system in Atlantic Canada, together with Springhill Institution. The facility recently installed a wind turbine, making it one of two federal penitentiaries in Canada with such a device.

Sources

  1. Dorchester Penitentiary Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-18
  2. Dorchester, New Brunswick Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-20

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.