Discover Toronto's history as told through its plaques

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Memorial Wall Plaques Dedicated to Patient Labourers

Photo by Alan L Brown - Posted March, 2016

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Photo Source - Wikimedia Commons

On the southwest corner of Queen Street West and Shaw Street on the grounds of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is this 2010 plaque. You can also learn more by visiting eight other plaques on the grounds. Their locations are shown on the first plaque above numbered 1 to 8 (a self-guided tour with audio description is available at 416-535-8501 ext. 31530). You can also see them all further down this page. Here's what this plaque says:

Coordinates: 43.644525 -79.416407

Click here for a larger map

These patient-built walls are a testament to the abilities of the people whose unpaid labour was central to the operation of asylums in the Province of Ontario during the 19th and 20th centuries. The asylum on Queen Street first opened in 1850 and was overcrowded within a few years. The initial idea of work as therapy gave way to the reality of work intended to save the provincial government money through unpaid patient labour. Men worked outdoors on construction, maintenance and farm work, including building and repairing many of the structures behind which they were confined, including the still-existing boundary walls on the south side of this property, built in 1860, and the east and west boundary walls built in 1888-89. Women worked primarily inside, doing the sewing, knitting and laundry for the asylum, while also working as domestic servants in both the nurses' and doctors' residences not far from this spot. Both men and women also worked in their own sex-segregated wards doing domestic chores such as cleaning, washing and scrubbing floors. Patients also worked in the male (west side) and female (east side) infirmaries, where they helped to care for those of their fellow patients who were sick and dying. Seen by many as the physical representation of prejudiced attitudes towards people with a psychiatric diagnosis, the walls which still stand today are historical monuments to the exploited labour of all psychiatric patients who lived, worked and died on these grounds since 1850.

Presented by the Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Friends of the CAMH Archives, and many other donors. Dedicated September 2010.

Learn more on a self-guided tour of eight more plaques, as indicated on the map, with an audio description at 416-535-8501, ext.1530

Below are the eight plaques mentioned in the plaque text above.

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Located near here was the superintendent's house, later the nurses' residence. Women patients worked as unpaid domestic servants in this building, washing, cleaning and cooking.

Related webpage
domestic servants

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Behind Edith and Alfie, daughters of the Head Groundskeeper, William Strickland, is the northern boundary wall, built in 1860 by unpaid patients, demolished in the 1970s.

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Kitchen and boiler structure, built by patients in 1890. Women and men inmates toiled in dining areas on the wards. Women patients also did unpaid laundry and sewing work.

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Male and female patients included skilled artisans, like Winston O., and expert seamstresses, like Audrey B. (pictured, inset), who worked for over 30 years in the sewing room. Their free labour contributed significantly to the operation of the asylum. This hospital employee (large image) worked alongside patients in the carpentry workshop building - one of two 19th-century buildings that still survive.

Related webpages
artisans
seamstresses
carpentry

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

This plaque is mounted near one of two workshops constructed in 1889 by unpaid male patients. In the 1920s, Jim P., a patient from 1898 until he died in 1941, worked in the tin shop and mattress shop. Nearby, the 1970s structures replaced the 19th-century Asylum buildings, amidst spirited debate over preserving the 1850 Howard Wing, as ideas changed concerning the optimal design and scale of treatment facilities.

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Railroad tracks along the asylum's southwest corner (indicated above) show where the 'coal gang', made up of unpaid male patients and a staff supervisor, hauled this fuel to nearby storage sheds. One remaining railroad track is near this spot - can you find it?

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Agricultural work was significant here from the 1850s until the late 1880s. Male patients did most of this free labour just outside of these walls.

Photos and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted June, 2011

Until 1912 a barnyard was located here, where unpaid patients tended farm animals. This building was also a mortuary where deceased patients were prepared for burial.

Related webpage
mortuary

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Institutional Buildings

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