In the dispatch “Hospitals of the Mind” (Geist 66), Stephen Osborne shares his thoughts regarding twenty-four photos of Essondale, the mental institution in Coquitlam, B.C., taken in 1913 on the occasion of its official opening. In 1966, Essondale was renamed Riverview Hospital and in the mid- to late 1970s, when I was still young enough to be learning the order of the months of the year, I was taken on my first visit to see my father at Crease Clinic, one of the buildings at Riverview.When I attempt to remember the half dozen visits to see my father there, I feel like I’m rummaging through poorly taken photos with heads cut off and shots of nothing but walls and sky. As I type this, I can remember my tiny legs on the seat of our old Gremlin. I must have done a lot of staring down on that first visit, hiding my gaze from uncomfortable eye contact. I might have glanced out the window as we drove onto the Riverview grounds to see men in a similar state to my father stretched out beneath trees. At home, a stack of photo albums was kept in the linen closet by the bath room. I took three or four volumes with floral covers from the soft darkness, carried them into the living room, dropped them into the shag rug and then opened them up to look into a happier time. There were photos of my father with a smile at a lumber camp some where in B.C. His hair was slicked back and the tattoo on his arm bulged off his biceps. In the black-and-white photos, every one smiled in logging camps or in round-bodied convertibles. There was even a photo of my mom with a smile. These were signs of happiness; the large buildings at Riverview, which looked like schools or courts of law, came with no signs and no explanation. The account of what had happened to my dad must have been clouded by emotion and fear in my mother’s and sisters’ voices, and they must have groped for words to explain schizophrenia to a six- or seven-year- old. No photos of my visits to my father were ever taken. In my memory I can see one room where he sat as a slouched shadow of his former self. The room was small and hollow, and there wasn’t much on the walls. I’m sure I was told to give my father a hug. A photo of our family hung in the kitchen at that time,and it stayed up in spite of the court order that prevented my dad from setting foot on the property. In the photo we all stand in front of a tiny pool and behind a small water fall at the ok Falls. I’m pouting in my dad’s arms because I wanted to stand on the rocky ledge like every one else, but he insisted on holding me. There were so many other times—I know my heart—when he held me and hugged me and I felt the bristle of his unshaven cheeks, and then one day the world dropped into unexplained absences and silences and those hugs—my closest con tact with the world—were offered by a man whom I no longer recognized. Later on, when I learned that Essondale was synonymous with something embarrassing, I hated the fact that he lived there for stretches at a time. My father passed away when I was twenty-one, and it pains me that he exists only as fading memory, in a photo of an empty hall way of Essondale. These words are my incantation to the memory of Abe Spenst.
As more than one astute reader pointed out, “Hospitals of the Mind” says that Essondale, the mental hospital in New West minster, B.C., included “a place called Crease Clinic.” In fact, Essondale was in Coquitlam; before it opened in 1913, the mental “asylum” in use was the original one at New West minster. (That asylum was located at 9 East Columbia Avenue and was there fore known as “Number 9.”) Crease Clinic was part of the Essondale complex, but it was completed much later and opened in 1949. —Ed.
