As of March 1997, 14,448 persons of a total Canadian population of approximately 30 million were serving Federal prison sentences. Of this number, 357 (2.5 percent) were women. As has been true in many countries, because of their small numbers and the inappropriateness of the rigid, militaristic, masculinist, hierarchical model of male prisons, women have been an afterthought in the correctional enterprise. Until the mid-1990's only one prison (P4W) had been constructed for federally sentenced women who were serving prison terms of 2 years to life. In 1979, Simon Fraser University sponsored the first Canadian conference on women in prison. This landmark conference set in motion a small but growing national network of activists, former prisoners, advocates, and academics whose work is meant to serve the interests of women in prison. This effort has been fueled by a series of 1990's events, some of which aroused the public to a recognition of abuses in women's prisons and others that raised hopes among human rights activists for more sensible ways of responding to law-breaking. This chapter reviews these events and notes the disheartening tendency of political leaders to engage in progressive rhetoric while failing to reform regressive practices. The chapter also notes the negative effects of security classifications on women in a mixed Federal-Provincial Canadian prison, as well as the impact of being imprisoned at great distance from their families. The author concludes that healing and punishment methods are antithetical, and they cannot be reconciled under the conditions of incarceration. 50 notes and 30 references