Welcome to Wonderland -- Old City Hall Criminal Court

It is difficult to convey a sense of Old City Hall courthouse in Toronto.

The building itself is a grand structure -- assuredly a historic site -- but sadly fallen into disrepair. The lovely tiled floors are patched, badly, and worn where they're are not scuffed. The hallways smell of sweat and fear and anger and loathing.

The Hall is inescapably linked to the Don Jail -- another ancient building where prisoners are held in conditions abominable to our grandparents. Three men in a tiny cell too small for one. The Don literally resembles the old Clink. The Hall and the Don are living proof the Beggar's Opera speaks truth to power.

Walking the halls are lawyers, judges, police, witnesses, accused and the walking dead (the mentally unstable, usually drug addicted, zombies who clearly don't know where they are, or if they do, they are somewhere else). Everyone is in a tumble because there are no secured halls and everyone moves promiscuously together. No fiction could be as odd as this without seeming contrived and false.

The Hall is where I started arguing in court -- night court 25 years ago, no, more than that. Oddly nothing has changed and the magistrates I appeared before then are still here now, unchanged and unchanging. They greet me as a young man. But others who have been my students at law school call over 'hello Professor Morton' and make small talk about evidence and practice.

It seems pleasant, if you ignore the smell and heat, until the screaming starts.

Someone, in great distress, cries out.

From where or why is not clear. Is the person injured or delusional or both? Regardless others take up the cry and the Hall fills, briefly, with howling that stops almost as soon as it begins.

Adding to the adventure is a demonstration (protest?) outside. The yelling has forced all windows closed (and there is no air conditioning in this ancient building). I go outside to get some air and snap a photo for the blog. A vague memory comes to mind of a neo Nazi protest in the 1980's outside the building.

It was evening and I left the Hall by a side way. I was suddenly part of the protest -- not where I wanted to be -- I suspect the neo Nazi would not want my type in their special club. Immigrants are over represented in municipal courts -- a function I suspect of poverty and prejudice -- and neo Nazis tend to see the Hall as a centre of infection for the nation.

I digress.

The Hall is a place out of Restoration England. The wealthy and powerful move cheek and jowl with the poor and the ill and the mad. It is the stuff of tragic opera or novels that seem implausible to the taste.

But this is not what a great nation does with its poor and downtrodden. Or perhaps, this is not what a great nation should do with its poor and downtrodden.