{"id":5548,"date":"2018-12-04T14:32:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T14:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/?p=5548"},"modified":"2019-01-02T18:00:28","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T18:00:28","slug":"remembering-those-we-never-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gh360.ca\/?p=5548","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Those We Never Knew"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” full_height=”yes” content_placement=”top” video_bg=”yes” video_bg_url=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1ntyUBBJ6Aw&feature=youtu.be” bg_type=”u_iframe” u_video_url=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1ntyUBBJ6Aw&feature=youtu.be” bg_override=”7″][vc_column bb_sm_mode=”no”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]\n

<\/h3>\n

1,115 people lay to rest here. <\/span><\/p>\n

Only 154 of them have headstones.<\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\n

W<\/span>edged between one of the busiest highways in Canada and factory warehouse buildings sits the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery. <\/span><\/p>\n

10 years ago this space would have been unrecognizable. <\/span><\/p>\n

Overgrown with weeds, littered with debris and garbage, unidentified and forgotten similar to those buried here. <\/span><\/p>\n

The patients, children, and staff from the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital are enshrined with the history of stigmatization and discrimination of mental illness. While the stories of those who are buried here may never come to life again, their memory will be passed on to future generations. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mirroring how mental health was understood at the time, patients were mistreated in life and neglected in death as the cemetery was left withering away. <\/span><\/p>\n

What had been used as a place for people to walk their dogs has since been cleaned and restored through the help of local activists and the dedicated and devoted volunteers at Among Friends. <\/span><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_media_grid element_width=”3″ gap=”10″ item=”masonryMedia_Default” grid_id=”vc_gid:1543937427935-ec64df0b-fb08-1″ include=”5120,5961,5957,5156″][vc_column_text]\n

The revitalization of the cemetery sparks a critical question that has led artist Anne Zbitnew on a journey to understand how we memorialize those with mental illness, and how we remember those we never knew. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe stigma we hold against mental health is not new, unfortunately it\u2019s a longer history that we\u2019re still battling with.\u201d says Jennifer Bazar, curator at Humber College\u2019s Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre. She points out that the some of the prejudices experienced through the history of psychiatric centres across Canada including Etobicoke\u2019s very own Lakeshore Asylum, still exist today. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Male

Male patients working on the Hospital<\/p><\/div>\n

The Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital opened in 1894 and was in operation until 1979. Using male patient labour to build all of its structure.The maintenance of certain service buildings such as the kitchen, bakery, and slaughterhouse all used the incarcerated to sustain the hospital\u2019s survival. <\/span><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\n

All of the original cottages, tunnels, and assembly buildings that were built to house the patients still remain on the lakeshore grounds having been reconstructed to preserve the culture of Toronto and the memories that lived between those walls. <\/span><\/p>\n

Few patient records or information about the hospital remain as Bazar explains they were left to deteriorate with the rest of the buildings. She says shame and disownment from families and society rendered patient and staff documents insignificant to collect and keep file.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the red brick buildings are now filled with hundreds of students as a part of Humber College\u2019s Lakeshore Campus, it is in the hands of today\u2019s society to continue to pass on the stories that once called this place home. <\/span><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\n

\"The

Asylum Pub Night Poster<\/p><\/div>\n

After the psychiatric hospital ceased operation, rumours stigma and folktales followed its closure. Tours through the underground tunnels were organized while ghost stories were told as people walked the very trails patients carved decades prior. <\/span><\/p>\n

Bazar states that the inaugural opening of the tunnel tours did entail a ghost style theme full of fictionalized haunted horror stories. But after local mental health organizations got word of the halloween events in what\u2019s left of the hospital they protested and put an end to the misrepresentations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we use halloween any sort of mental health topic as a costume or as a horror movie, haunted house, or ghost story your taking a marginalized population and adding to the stereotype which will only perpetuate a stigma\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Ghost tours and haunted houses were not the only creations derived from the institutions history. Posters for haunted pub nights filtered throughout south Etobicoke, gleaming over the tragedy and suffering that hundreds had experienced. <\/span><\/p>\n

Anne Zbitnew, now a media professor at Humber College, recalls the first time she was faced with one of the posters. What was advertising a halloween themed bar night using images of real patients from the Lakeshore Hospital, fell from Zbitnew\u2019s shelf onto the floor, having never seen it before. <\/span><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”middle”][vc_column][scrollmagic_sequence align=”center” images=”5805,5273″][\/scrollmagic_sequence][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_column_text]She took the poster and redesigned it in a way that would \u201cuntell the story\u201d and give movement and life back to the person exploited in the picture. This became a life long project for Anne and the topic to her masters thesis explaining how it truly chose her.\u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]