three were eventually recaptured, and transferred to maximum security institutions. David Clayton-Thomas, who had been a juvenile offender in his youth before becoming a noted rock singer, also spent some time in the institution. Closure After the prison was closed in 1975, the provincial government's initial plan to sell off the site was opposed by MPP Bud Germa. After a journalist from CKNC-TV interviewed Germa about the issue on the Burwash site, Progressive Conservative MPP Margaret Scrivener accused him of illegal trespassing. In 1977, the federal government of Canada launched a feasibility study on a proposal to take over the facility as a new maximum security prison, but this was dropped in 1978. The provincial government also considered proposals to convert the site into a provincial park or a physical rehabilitation center to be operated by the provincial Workman's Compensation Board, which were also not pursued. In 1980, a portion of the site was leased to the Regional Municipality of Sudbury as part of a failed attempt to launch an angora goat farm in the area, which became one of the most infamous economic development boondoggles in the city's history. In 1986, Cambrian College professor David Blake put forward a proposal to buy the site and open a for-profit institution at which prisoners would be given unionized paid work, which was also not pursued. In 1987, the land was parcelled off to various groups. The Department of National Defence took over 3,000 hectares for use as a military training area; the Burwash Native Peoples Project took over 3,200 hectares for a First Nations-owned sawmill company; the Sudbury Public School Board leased part of the land for an outdoor science education program; the provincial Ministry of Transportation took over on-site gravel reserves for use in road construction; the Ministry of Natural Resources took over 6,200 hectares for timber and wildlife management; and a local country music festival was granted a parcel of the site to serve as its new venue. A citizen's group in Sudbury, the Sudbury Citizens Movement, opposed the plan and sought to acquire the site so it could establish a worker's cooperative in the institutional buildings and an affordable housing community in the residential townsite, but was not successful in overturning the selloff. Nearly all of the remaining buildings at the Burwash site were demolished in 1994, although the Camp Bison jail facility was still standing as of