'An amazing and horrible history': Remembering the Waterford Hospital
'Don't let it go, don't let it just disappear,' says former Waterford Hospital in-patient
People who've lived and worked at the Waterford Hospital in St. John's say it has a complicated history of pain and recovery, deeply disturbing stories of abuse, sharing powerful memories of caring and lifelong friendships.
No one individual can speak for the thousands of people who've known the psychiatric hospital since it opened in 1855, but CBC News spoke with three people whose lives have been deeply affected by the 170-year-old facility.
They say that as the province opens its new mental health and addictions centre in St. John's, the Waterford's failures and successes must be remembered.
Lived experience inside and out
"Don't let it go, don't let it just disappear," says Susan Hyde, who was a patient in the facility for two months in 2007 and is now the executive director of the Schizophrenia Society of Newfoundland and Labrador.
I made friends there that I still have in my life because you just get close real quick. It's almost like camp, but it's not.- Susan Hyde
Hyde's first memory of the hospital isn't good.
"When I first came to the Waterford Hospital, I was in the back of a police vehicle," she said.
Hyde was diagnosed with bipolar disorder decades ago. She was receiving treatment in 2007, but after she stopped taking her medications, she ended up at the emergency department of the Health Sciences Centre. When Hyde spoke with a doctor there, it went badly.
"I think I had been very, very ill for a long time. He was just talking to me, but it sounded to me like he was screaming. I mean, really screaming. And so, what do you do when somebody is screaming at you? You scream back. And so, then I remember two police officers were there and one of them was like, 'Good luck, Susan. I hope everything goes well for you.' As he put me in the back of the police vehicle," she said.
Hyde said the two months she lived at the Waterford were difficult.
"I was in quite a bit of pain and quite scared, actually, because you had maybe six women in a room and each one of us had her own bit of illness, madness, whatever you want to call it, and then when you're not well, you're very vulnerable," she said.
Hyde also has good memories of that time.
"I'm an advocate and so that's what I did. I just helped people get out to vote or I came up with a questionnaire for the kitchen, you know, like, 'how was your meal today?'" she said.
"It was the people there who made it for me. I made friends there that I still have in my life because you just get close real quick. It's almost like camp, but it's not."
I'm going to miss this place... even though, you know, this place needs some help.- Susan Hyde
Her advocacy led to work with the province's schizophrenia society, and now as executive director of the group, she works out of its office at that very same hospital.
"I remember the day that I got the job and they gave me the keys — an A1 key and it's the key to the whole hospital. I remember my first thought was, and this is totally honest, 'Oh God, please don't let me go manic because I might let everybody out … but I won't,'" she said.
"So now we run support groups in the hospital. It's the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. I was sicker than I have ever been in my life when I was here and now I'm better than I've ever been in my life."
Hyde strongly believes the Waterford should not be forgotten.
"The book on this place has not been written and there's a group of us who are interested in capturing these stories and not letting people be forgotten," she said.
Hyde also says there's a part of the Waterford's history that needs to be explored further after the move to the new facility.
"Some people will tell you there were two cemeteries on the grounds here for people who died at the Waterford, but nobody can tell us where they are. And so just as part of honouring the building and the people who were here, we're very curious," she said. "So if anybody has a ground penetrating radar unit … you know, this is Newfoundland history."
Sitting in the mostly cleared out chapel of the Waterford, noticing that only some of the stations of the cross remain on its walls, Hyde takes a deep breath.
"I'm going to miss this place. I will bawl my eyes out and it's hard for me to cry because I'm on mood stabilizers. But, you know, we're all kind of crying now, even though ... this place needs some help," she said.
'An amazing and horrible history'
The Waterford Hospital has also left a deep impression on criminal defence lawyer and mental health advocate Mark Gruchy, who spent a lot of time at the facility in the 1990s.
"I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and forced to leave high school in my teens due to mental illness. I ended up in a program for completion of high school that was between the Waterford Hospital and the College of the North Atlantic, at the time," he said.
It was a formative time for Gruchy.
"I was on the grounds of that hospital every day of the week. I got to know long-term residents. I had many extremely significant life experiences in that building. So, I feel like a part of me will never leave the Waterford Hospital," he said.
"That experience motivated me to continue to advocate for destigmatization of mental illness after I became a lawyer, and to protect people with mental health concerns as best I could. Ultimately, I got involved with the Canadian Mental Health Association of Newfoundland and Labrador and was the president of that for six years."
WATCH | Former patient hopes to share stories from inside the Waterford Hospital:
Gruchy says the Waterford's past failures should be remembered and studied to keep them from happening again.
"So these facilities are created on positive ideas. We're going to actually make a fit place for people to live, and then as it unfolds and goes along, they become dumping grounds, if you will, places to put people who have nowhere else to be," he said.
Gruchy says this was happening as recently as the 1990s.
"In the 1990s, I knew senior citizens at the Waterford with dementia, brain damage, all kinds of reasons why someone would end up there that are not what we think of as mental illnesses today," he said.
Gruchy fears ignoring the past will lead to repeating it.
"It's dangerous to turn away from the past and to try to just forget the bad things. It's a story of people trying to be good and then they're colliding with realities, such as budget cuts, and things getting bad over and over again in waves, he said."
"That's what actually produced all the horror and trauma. It's an amazing and horrible history."
Control and de-institutionalization
Chandra Kavanagh is the current CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association Newfoundland and Labrador. She also has a PhD in biomedical ethics.
Controlling people who had mental illness, but also controlling people who didn't quite fit into society,- Chandra Kavanagh
"The intention of the Waterford was to help people who had mental illness, but it also became a holding place for what were called social undesirables at the time. So that included the impoverished, the elderly, people with disabilities, feminists, activists," she said.
"So that was controlling people who had mental illness, but also controlling people who didn't quite fit into society. So there were certainly some caregivers who worked in the facility who only and always dedicated themselves to people getting better, but the history of the Waterford is a lot more complicated than that, and in some cases it was a holding place for people who didn't have anywhere else to go or who as a society we couldn't cope with."
Kavanagh recounted disturbing stories of abuse in the Waterford's past.
"Historically, women expressing feminist ideals were called 'hysterical.' So husbands had their wives put into care because their wives were depressed or not conducting themselves in a way that they thought was appropriate," she said. "There's a very long history of mental health and mental health institutions being used as a way to control women, especially women who were speaking up against patriarchy."
She says more recent history — what she refers to as the discharge scandal of the 1980s — should inform future decisions.
"This was really popular across inpatient facilities in the 1980s, where the idea, a noble one, was to get people back into the community. But unfortunately, the supports that those people needed to thrive outside institutions weren't provided," she said.
"So some people ended up homeless or addicted to drugs when they weren't able to thrive with support in the community. Let's learn from those mistakes and make sure if we are de-institutionalizing people, they have everything they need to be able to succeed."
The new mental health and addictions centre is scheduled to open on Sunday, according to Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services.
The health authority isn't saying what will happen to the Waterford Hospital buildings in the future.
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