A Morning in Building #5

Old Whitby Psychiatric Hospital

Construction of the "Ontario Hospital for the Insane" began around the time of World War I. It was designed as a series of "cottages" and sane-looking buildings to help advance the patients' return to society. The prisons and "lunatic asylums" that they otherwise would have had to endure at the time are considered barbaric by today's standards. The vast majority of the buildings were linked via underground tunnels.

Attempting to find detailed historical information from the Internet about my hometown's monument to mental health care wasn't a simple task when my interest in the subject was at its peak. A brief mention of it on its successor's website was about the extent of my findings, so I had to do the remainder of my research offline.

Today, if you want to learn more about the hospital and/or its history, Wikipedia's Whitby Psychiatric Hospital article is a good place to start. Wikipedia didn't exist when my research into this subject began.

My Story Begins

After collecting information about the subject from a variety of sources, I took it upon myself to go to this modern architectural marvel, and to document the location using my digital camera and other methods. Unfortunately, my camera at the time didn't have a flash, and thus made capturing good photographs rather difficult when there was an absence of sufficient light. Nevertheless, I do have a fair number of photographs from the location, along with some stories.

This story takes place in October of 2000. It features real photographs that I personally captured. I have not modified these pictures in any way, save for applying the copyright information.

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