The Colquitz Mental Home

Compiled by Sarah Cook, Kathleen Trayner, Chris Atchison and Robert Menzies

Introduction

This collection chronicles a social history of ‘madness’ at the Provincial Mental Home, Colquitz, British Columbia, 1919-1964. Located on 25 acres of land in the District of Saanich, just outside the provincial capital city of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the Colquitz Mental Home was a specialist facility (the second of its kind in Canada, following the Rockwood Asylum in Kingston, Ontario) focusing on the containment of ‘criminally insane’ and otherwise ostensibly ‘difficult’ and ‘dangerous’ mental patients.

With an exclusively male population of up to 300 inmates at its peak, Colquitz operated as a branch institution of the central psychiatric facility on the British Columbia mainland (the Public Hospital for the Insane in New Westminster until 1924, and the Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale in Port Coquitlam thereafter). The majority of men institutionalized at Colquitz arrived from the general mental hospitals (typically having been judged too hard to manage in those contexts); from the provincial prisons or federal British Columbia Penitentiary (having been found ‘insane’ while incarcerated); or from the criminal courts (following their adjudication as ‘unfit to stand trial’ or ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’).

In what follows we summarize the general aims of the project, and we review the contents of this website collection, including those that will be forthcoming as the work progresses over the next two or three years.

The Colquitz Archive Project

Stage One
The immediate goal for this project has been to expand a previously-available research sample compiled by Dr. Robert Menzies and associates during the 1990s. This initial study resulted in both qualitative and quantitative analysis of historical patient files for 100 male inmates detained at Colquitz between 1919 and 1933, during the tenure of its first lay supervisor, Granby Farrant.

The first stage of the research project involved bringing the existing sample up to at least 50% for both annual and total admissions. Together, the original Patient Transfer Book (housed at the BC Archives, Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria (RBCA), and previously compiled research materials provided a listing of patient names, admission dates and file locations. From these sources, we developed a list of all transfers and residents of Colquitz by compiling a database of summary information for each individual (753 in total).

Stage Two
With permission in hand, the next step was to locate the patient files for transcription and analysis. The majority of these mental health records are held by the BC Archives, Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, BC, with some files still in the custody of the Health Information Services (HIS) department of Riverview Hospital.

Transcriptions of the Colquitz patient files focus on administrative records, treatments, medications, daily ward notes, personal and family histories. Many files contain incident reports on ‘unusual occurrences’ or ‘patient trouble’ and reflect specific constructions of social order, while other correspondence speaks more generally to the everyday experience and culture of the asylum. While medical and administrative records tell part of the story of these individuals within ‘facts and figures’, the agency of inmates is clearly present through records of escapes, anecdotes of activities and ephemera such as personal letters, photographs, mementos, private journals and artwork.

As these clinical files are restricted under a research agreement obtained through provincial privacy legislation, they will not be made available on this website. However, as this project unfolds we will be reporting on aggregate, quantitative trends extracted from the records. Through the writings that this data base will make possible, we will also be selectively enlisting qualitative file data, in de-identified format, to illustrate (1) the social and medico-legal forces that ushered these men into (and, sometimes, out of) Colquitz, (2) the lives and experiences of inmates during their confinement, (3) the relations that prevailed between patients, families, doctors, other authorities and the community, and (4) the wider understandings of and responses to ‘criminal insanity’ that helped shape the history of the Colquitz and the men who inhabited it.

Stage Three – In Progress
With transcription work for a 50% sample (stratified by year) complete, we have finalized the third stage of the Victoria research: coding data from 387 transcriptions for quantitative and qualitative analysis using SPSS and NVivo software programs in order to examine the socioeconomic variables at work.

Supplementary Research:
Document Digitization, Images and Secondary Collections

Royal BC Archives
Additional research based in Victoria included the collection of all Colquitz and mental health issues/policy-related information held by the RBCA on microfilm or within patient files. Where possible under restrictions of privacy, newspaper clippings and photographs were digitally imaged. These include a Newspaper Clippings Scrap Book originally complied by the administrators of the Colquitz Mental Home; excerpts from BC Sessional Papers and Mental Hospital Annual Reports that make reference to the institution; and an extensive photographic archive that was compiled from the RBCA’s on-line image collection. Other images of the Official Closing of Colquitz (January 1964) were also collected and scanned for this exhibit.

Saanich Archives
The Saanich Archives was also generous in allowing us to digitize their collection of materials relating to the site’s construction and history. These digital images include indexes to newspaper articles, and original newspaper clippings, architectural plans and photographs of both past and present-day Colquitz not available at the RBCA. All images are available on the History of Madness in Canada Website and have been shared with the Saanich Archives.

Secondary Materials
Also contained in this collection are academic writings on the Colquitz Mental Home. These include four articles authored by Robert Menzies, entitled “The making of criminal insanity in British Columbia,” “‘I do not care for a lunatic’s role,’” “Contesting criminal lunacy,” and “Historical profiles of criminal insanity.” Other material will be forthcoming as the collection expands over time.

Acknowledgements
Robert Menzies wishes to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada for funding this collection through a Standard Research Grant (2005-08) awarded to the project “Domesticating criminal insanity: A cultural history of the Provincial Mental Home, Colquitz.” Further, this research would not have been possible without ongoing assistance from Mac Culham, Manager, Corporate Information, Privacy, and Records Royal British Columbia Museum Corporation; his access to a database developed by Dr. Geoffrey Smith of the Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia; and the ongoing facilitation of the Riverview Research Advisory Committee and Health Information Services (HIS) (in particular, Dr. William Honer, Dr. Zoe Hodgson, Ms. Deborah Ross, and Ms. Pauline Verral). A special thank-you goes to all the RBCA reference and retrievals staff for helping to locate these files, to Carolyn Duncan and Geoffrey Castle of the Saanich Archives, and to those collaborators whose generous donation of photographs is acknowledged in the introductions to the individual image collections.

Future Contributions
As the project progresses, we plan to continue supplementing this collection with additional contributions derived from archival, media and other sources. These will feature, first and foremost, a key section on the lived experiences and perspectives of patients who were confined in the Colquitz Mental Home during its 45 years of operation. Also included will be exhibits on the construction and maintenance of the facility; public mental health reports; additional newspaper clippings and photographs; biographies of the Colquitz’s four supervisors/superintendents (Granby Farrant, Frederick Spooner, T.A. (Bob) Morris and Leonard d’Easum); de-identified personal accounts and case histories; and contemporary publications.

Click on an Item in the Left-Hand Menu to Begin Your Tour of the Colquitz Archive.