The following article is from UW Magazine March 2026 issue, it was written by Hannelore Sudermann with photos by John Lok
No Time to Waste
After more than two decades in prison, Benjamin Brockie begins again—as a student, a father and an advocate for education and Indigenous justice.
The last time Benjamin Brockie saw his grandmother, she was in her hospital bed. He had been allowed two hours of compassionate release from prison to see her.
He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and shower shoes, his wrists locked in shackles that rattled as he walked down the hallway escorted by an armed guard.
When she saw him, she called his name, reached out and began to cry.
Brockie leaned over and she embraced him, but he couldn’t hug her back.
“I just felt so shameful,” he says now, “because I let my family down.”
He had been in prison for six years at that point. He was serving a 67-year sentence for crimes including bank robbery, offenses he committed at 20 and had long recognized as harm to those he threatened. What he hadn’t fully grasped—until that moment in the hospital room—was how far the hurt he caused had spread.
“Seeing her like that,” he says, “I realized I didn’t just harm those victims. I harmed their families. I harmed my family. I harmed my community.” Six years later, his actions were still wounding people he loved.
At the end of the visit, Brockie returned to prison certain of one thing: he would probably die there. The realization came with a new resolve. “I wanted to do better,” he says. “At least for my family and the family members of my victims.”