Via BoingBoing, I found this collection of photos from a recent visitor to the Weyburn Mental Hospital, which I mentioned in an earlier post due to its connection to LSD experiments in the 1950s. I suppose the place is a bit creepy (I always thought the driveway to the hospital in the above photo should have been featured in a horror movie a la The Shining, but it’s mostly just sad and decrepit. When I moved to Weyburn as a kid in 1967 it was still a mental hospital, and kids always joked about “they’re going to take you to the Mental” and tried to scare each other with tales of escaped mental patients.
Later, I knew it better as the Souris Valley Extended Care Hospital, and then as the Souris Valley Regional Care Centre. In the 1980s, we used to rehearse Crocus ’80 Theatre (Weyburn’s amateur theatre group) plays in one abandoned wing, and I wandered around in it a bit. Interesting, but it could be spooky if that was your turn of mind, I suppose. The only strange thing that ever happened during rehearsal was a divebombing bat, who was dispatched by an actor with a broom (over my objections, since I’m a fan of bats).
Over all the years I lived in Weyburn I was in the still-in-use parts of the building many times. I remember performing as part of some kind of talent show on the stage there when I was nine or 10, and singing there many times as a teenager with the chorus from Western Christian College, which my Dad directed, or just with a group from the Weyburn Church of Christ. I think Crocus ’80 actually put on at least one of our plays there for patients, and of course I was often there as a newspaper reporter with the Weyburn Review, photographing, interviewing, etc., etc. (One interesting story concerned an amazing mural painted on one wall of a basement room by a former patient.)
I haven’t been out there since so much of it was boarded up. It would be great if they could find a buyer for it, but it seems unlikely. It’s just too big, and too old. It’s a piece of history, and soon it will probably be in pieces–and history.
3 comments
Um, no. No amnesia. I remember the talent show precisely; I just don’t remember if we were there as part of a school group or a church group. In any event, I don’t believe for a second there was any secret experimentation with the children of Weyburn. But I do appreciate your concern.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/424/526
Weyburn’s psychiatrists worked together with CIA-funded projects based in institutions like McGill and Columbia University. They gave LSD and other drugs to mental patients, and also to groups of children, just to see what would happen. Many of these researchers were Scottish Rite Masons, part of an extended Old Boys Club that reached into the military. They saw themselves as a higher race, beyond the reach of law, as they explored uncharted territory of the mind. They ruined many lives.
If you went there as part of “some kind of talent show” you may have been part of those experiments, without your knowledge, because many of the drugs they used on children created states of amnesia.
I was born and raised in Weyburn and even though I’m only 17, I’ll probably cry when they tear it down this winter 🙁