Sir WIlliam Gage

In 1895, Sir William Gage and his associates wanted to establish the first tuberculosis sanitarium of it’s kind in Canada. After visiting TB sanitariums in Europe and America, the philanthropist Gage had an idea that Canada should have its own TB sanitarium.

Gage, who grew up in Brampton, Ontario was the wealthy president of W.J. Gage Publishing. He approached the city of Toronto with a $25,000 contribution to help build a TB sanitarium. The city turned down his offer partly due to fears associated with such a TB facility. At the time it was believed that TB was a poor man’s disease and hereditary.

After the City of Toronto turned down Gage’s offer, the Town of Gravenhurst made an offer of a $10,000 towards the National Sanitarium Association to support the construction of a TB hospital. Gage contributed an amount of $25,000. Mr. Hartland Massey contributed $25,000 and Mr. William Christie contributed $10,000.

A businessman from Kamloops, British Columbia made an equally tempting offer – free train rides to the BC facility if the sanitarium were to be built in British Columbia instead.

It was decided to construct the sanitarium in Gravenhurst on the shore of Lake Muskoka. The weather, the lake, the open air would be ideal for patients. It was also ideally located away from rural living.

The National Sanitarium Association was formed in 1896 to collect and administer funds for the creation of a Canadian sanitarium. The president of the NSA was Sir Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona) and the secretary was William Gage. The association had two purposes: to build sanitariums and to fund research.

With funding secured, construction commented. On July 13, 1897 the Muskoka Cottage Sanitarium, Canada’s first TB sanitarium opened. The MCS accepted paying patients and conditions were similar to that of staying in a resort. The fee was $6 per week with the average stay being 98 days.

Patients had plenty of rest, recreation and good food.

Muskoka Free Hospital for Consumptives

The NSA Board of Directors felt that poor people deserved treatment as well. In 1902 the Muskoka Free Hospital for Consumptives opened on the same grounds, the first free hospital in the world. Consumption was the term for tuberculosis at the time.

When the MFHC burnt down in 1920, it was replaced with a new building named after Sir William Gage who had recently passed away.

Muskoka Sanitarium Admin Building

In 1920 expansions were made to the Muskoka sanitarium to increase patient capacity to 444 beds. Buildings were constructed to allow surgeries, a laboratory, service buildings and homes for the professionals that worked at the Muskoka Cottage Sanitarium.

By 1934 there were twelve sanitariums across Canada.

A Medical Breakthrough

With the discovery of streptomycin in 1944, the need for traditional isolation lessened. This led to a decline in the number of patients during the 1940’s to 1950’s. In 1960 the site became a housing and care facility for development challenged individuals.

The site became known as the Muskoka Centre.

Conditions at Muskoka Centre were poor. There were too few staff and too many patients. Several patients suffered abuse at the hands of employees. A 1985 inquiry into conditions at the Muskoka Centre found that residents were not receiving adequate care.

A $36 million class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of patients who had been at twelve residential care facilities in Ontario. For patients of the Muskoka Centre the class-action covered those who’d been residents between August 28, 1973 and June 30, 1993.

The Muskoka Centre was finally closed in 1994.

Present Day

The Muskoka Sanitarium property has sat dormant since that time. Every winter the inside stairs coat with slippery ice as more mold accumulates inside. The water pipes have burst due to the cold Northern Ontario winters. People tear boards off the windows, Infrastructure Ontario replaces them.

The location has seen increased foot traffic from urban explorers. In July of 2017 a media campaign was released to discourage people from trespassing on the ground. Fifty people had been charged with trespass in that year alone.

Don’t be surprised if you’re caught here. The OPP use the grounds for police dog training.

Gravenhurst Town Council would like to see the property sold. Potential buyers Maple Leaf Education Systems and Knightstone Capital Management, would like to redevelop the property.

The Hamilton Asylum for the Insane was originally intended to be an asylum for inebriates (people with alcohol issues). The community was becoming concerned by people who appeared to be disoriented and wandering the streets. Society often thought people who had mental health issues were drunk, not understanding that the problems were not alcohol related.

By 1887 the number of drunken people was so few that the decision was made to house “lunatics”.

The Hamilton Asylum for the Insane opened in March of 1876. It was situated on 529 acres of land in Hamilton. The asylum was the sixth of it’s kind in Ontario. The others being in Toronto, Kingston, Amherstburg, Orillia and London.

The asylum, a High Victorian structure, was accessible from a dirt road away from the city. The building contained a three-storey square centre block and two-storey wings on each side. A rear kitchen wing was added in 1895.

The site was self-sufficient like many similar institutions. An on-site farm raised cattle, chickens and pigs. A garden provided fruits and vegetables, a bakery provided bread, and the butcher’s shop provided meat.

Initial capacity was 202 patients who arrived from surrounding areas including Halton, Peel, Simcoe, Wellington, Waterloo, Norfolk, Lincoln and Hamilton. The building was known as the Barton Building. Dr. R. Bucke was the Medical Superintendent. Dr. Bucke also worked at the London Insane Asylum.

The East House was built to serve as a “reception hospital” where people could walk in from the street without a doctor’s referral. East House’s purpose changed later on to house criminally insane.

Other facilities included the tailor’s shop, sewing room, upholstery shop, power house and fire hall. Recreational facilities consisted of a skating rink, curling rink, bowling green and tennis courts.

By September 30th, 1887 there were 625 beds available. When “Orchard House” was complete that number rose to 890 beds. By 1890 the Hamilton Asylum for the Insane had 915 patients and 119 employees. And by 1909 it asylum had beds for 1,200 patients.

Around 1902 a training school for psychiatric nursing was established and it was accredited in 1924. The school saw over 240 nurses graduate before it closed in 1956.

The Hamilton Asylum for the Insane began taking patients in March of 1876. Initial capacity was 202 patients. It closed in 1995.

Patients of the asylum were often seen as entertainment. Families would pack a picnic basket and drive up to the asylum to watch the patients. Sometimes families would even taunt the patients.

Deaths

Century Manor certainly has had a dark history. Take for example the story of Bridget English. Ms. English was suicidal and was found to continually be creating ropes for the purpose of hanging herself. She had once been cut down just in time to save her life. On November 10th, 1887 while the two hallway attendants weren’t watching, she used knitting cotton tied to steam pipes. Despite being cut down she couldn’t be resuscitated.

In another incident on August 1, 1911 a fire broke out at approximately 1 AM on the fourth floor of the Barton Building. The newspaper article described the patients as “maniacs” including one patient who fled back into the fire.

“HAMILTON, Ont., Aug. 1 – Eight lives were lost in a fire which partly destroyed one of the main buildings of the insane asylum on the side of the mountain southwest of this city early today. There were 800 sleeping patients in the building when the fire was discovered, and it was only a well-trained fire-fighting corps and coolness and bravery among the nurses and attendants under Dr. English that averted a more serious loss of life.”

“There are four buildings in the group within the asylum grounds. The main building, where the fire occurred, is a four-story brick structure with a basement, 200 feet in length and about 70 feet wide, with wings at either end. The women patients, numbering some 350, occupied quarters in the west wing. The rest of the building was taken up with men’s wards, and contained some of the most desperate cases in the asylum.”

“The women were moved without serious difficulty and housed in the adjoining buildings. The situation among the men was more serious. The fire started on the fourth floor, in what is known as Section D, where the most violently insane are kept. The bulk of the men, guarded by attendants, moved down three flights of stairs out of the fire zone in orderly procession, but about a score, driven into a frenzy by the stifling smoke and the excitement of a midnight fire, fought off their rescuers with desperate fury. Three of them, after being carried down to the second floor, broke away, and fled back into the blazing corridors.”

“The fire in the meantime had spread down the hallway and was eating its way through the floor to the third story. The asylum brigade, although fighting bravely, was handicapped by the maniacs and was losing control.”

“The city brigade, which had been summoned, was then toiling up the almost precipitous roadway leading to the asylum grounds. It was nearly 2 o’clock before the first of their apparatus was brought into play. The firemen ran scaling ladders up to the third and fourth floor windows, where it was believed some of the unfortunates had fled. They found it difficult work to break down the iron grating on the windows, and the fire in the meantime was growing fiercer every minute. Crawling into the stifling smoke, the firemen groped their way about until they found a maniac. If he was unconscious from smoke the task was easy, but if he was still able to offer resistance, he was knocked senseless and dropped into the life nets below. Eights of the insane and one attendant who had lost consciousness in the work of rescue were saved in this way.”

“The combined fire forces had the situation well in hand by 3:30 A.M. The two upper floors and the roof of the east wing were burned and the lower floors were flooded with water. As the firemen worked their way into the burned section some bodies were found. Three were taken out of the hallway on the top floor. It was found that one helpless paralytic was burned to death in his cell. Four more were found huddled together in a small room, burned to a crisp.”

“The blazing roof of the asylum perched up on the mountainside attracted the attention of the entire city. The cry, “The asylum is on fire!” rang through the streets, and hundreds flocked up the hill. It was a weird sight that presented itself. The hysterical screams of the 200 inmates of the four building drowned every other sound. The firemen, fighting both the flames and the maniacs, were in constant peril, and frequently were seen perched on the window sills through which the smoke was pouring in dense columns trying to drag forth a struggling man. One maniac broke from the grasp of a fireman at a window and fled back into the flames, where he perished.”

“A searching investigation has been ordered. The fire is believed to have been caused by a short circuit on an electric wire in the storeroom on the top floor.”

October 2015 Photos

Present Day

The asylum was owned by the Government of Ontario until November of 2000 when ownership was transferred to St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton. Today they are known as the Centre for Mountain Health Sciences.

Most of the buildings have been demolished with the exception of the Century Manor which stands to this day. Century Manor has been vacant since 1995. It opened briefly in 2009 for Doors Open Hamilton.

Access to the property is difficult to gain. Infrastructure Ontario owns the property but rarely permits people inside, including Hamilton’s Heritage Committee.

Infrastructure Ontario has no problem renting you their facilities for thousands of dollars per day however. As of 2015, the property has been up for sale.

In 2018 there were plans to sell the property to Mohawk College to be used as a college residence. The plans fell through.

Media
What’s happening with Century Manor? (CBC)

Exploring an abandoned psychiatric hospital with morgue in St. Thomas, Ontario

Introduction

In August of 1937 construction began on a hospital in St. Thomas, Ontario which became known as the Ontario Government Hospital, St. Thomas. It was built on land belonging to six farm families. The 460 acres of land was able to provide crops for the facility’s food and produce.

The hospital opened on April 1, 1939 and took in its first 32 patients. By August the number of patients was close to 1,100 people. The maximum capacity is said to have been reached in 1958 with 2,238 patients. At the time the St. Thomas Psych had a reputation for being the finest mental health hospital in Canada due to its modern design. It also provided jobs during the recession.

World War II

When World War II was declared, the hospital was leased to the Department of National Defence. The agreement took effect October 23, 1939. The last patients were transferred out on October 31, 1939. Supplies for the R.C.A.F. began arriving three days later.

Sixty thousand men and women from every country in the British Commonwealth, as well as American volunteers with the R.C.A.F. were trained here. The school was known as, “No. 1 Training and Technical School”.

The nurses residence was converted to house R.C.A.F officers and their family.

The school was equipped to handle more than 2,000 students at a time. They offered six-month courses for aircraft electricians and aero-engineers, air-frame and instrument mechanics and training for fabric and sheet metal workers.

With the local economy now being increased, St. Thomas responded with drop-in centres offering free coffee and sandwiches for R.C.A.F. personnel, dances, and other activities.

By October 1942, 20,000 ground crew personnel had graduated from the school. In 1944, capacity for treating returning wounded soldiers was increased from 200 to 700 beds.

Patients were relocated to other parts of the province. The hospital was returned to the Ontario Department of Health and reopened to patients in 1945.

Patients were able to take part in the farming and food production process which contributed to feelings of self-worth and contributing.

Beginning in the 1970’s it was decided that rather than confine people to institutions, that through mental health transformation patient care should shift from that of an institutional model to helping patients learn to live productive lives in the community. It offered patients hope and recovery.

There was a nurses residence on the other side of the highway (Sunset Drive) and underground tunnels provided transportation. A bicycle at each end of the tunnel allowed nurses to quickly make their way from one end to the other.

1988 Incident

In 1988 two patients at the hospital were given day passes to allow them to work. One patient earned enough money to purchase a car. On March 31, 1988 one of the two men told his boss that he wanted to “leave early and get laid”. The two men drove to London where they found a fourteen year old girl waiting for a bus. She was abducted and beaten in the car on route to the factory where one of the men worked. The girl was thrown into a river where she later walked to a nearby house for help.

Transition

The St. Thomas Psych Hospital was taken over by St. Joseph’s Health Care in London as part of a reorganization initiative ordered by the Health Care Restructuring Commission (HSRC) in 1997. HSRC directives called for the divestment of a certain number of long term specialized inpatient beds from St. Joseph’s to hospitals across southwestern Ontario and the construction of two new specialized mental health care facilities, one in London and one in St. Thomas. The report recommended significant transitional funding to build community resources that would offset the eventual closure of beds.

A modern state of the art hospital was built on the grounds of the existing hospital in St. Thomas. It opened in June of 2013.

The hospital has taken on several names: Ontario Hospital, St. Thomas Psych and St. Thomas Regional Mental Health Care.

The colours blue and green were often used on walls as they created a calming atmosphere.

While exploring this facility in 2015 we found a pigeon trapped inside. It was flying into the walls in a panicked attempt to escape. Using a pair of gloves, one of our crew plucked it and let it escape out a window. We then closed the windows to prevent a recurrence.

Other events:

February 2016 – OPP warn explorers to stay out of the facility.

January 2020 – Actor Jason Momoa intends to film a post-apocalyptic television show inside the former hospital. It will be titled ‘See’ and will be released on Apple TV.

All research done by TWP.