This photograph, called Blind Dalmatians, was one I stumbled across when looking through the archives at daily dose of imagery. It was a textural curiosity. Then I read the caption underneath. I found it chilling. "I was going through my archive of Whitby's abandoned psychiatric hospital photos and found this from the children's ward."
This picture was taken at the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. As I mentioned earlier about this photographic blog, it covers the Toronto area, where I grew up. I am very familiar with the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. Growing up it was common to zing a friend with a "you belong in Whitby" or "did you just get out of Whitby?". We were aware of who resided in that place and we imagined all sorts of scenarios about men and women who had come to the edge of their sensibilities and found solace behind the barred windows of the "funny farm".
I never imagined the above scenario. I never imagined the kids. I never thought that a child would be a resident there. I think that is a common oversight. In the comments that ran beneath this picture a few wondered why there would be a children's ward at the psychiatric hospital.
But now I know. I understand who would have looked upon these walls, eight years previous to this picture being taken, when the hospital was still open. This picture was taken just before the demolition crew came in. It had been abandoned and left to shrink into history. That explains the cracked and peeling paint. It's the two dogs that got me, their lack of eyes. It hit me all at once, the children's ward at the mental institution, the weeping dogs. I realized all at once that those children were the ones abandoned at birth because they were going to be a "burden". They were "never going to learn". They would "never know their parents, never communicate". They were born with DS, they had an extra chromosome. Here is a wall in a place that housed the kids society had given up on, had decided they would never get a chance. And so the dogs wept, cried at the waste of a child left to shrink into history. Or was it a compassionate soul blinding them from the what had to be such a sorrowful thing to have to watch.
Let me emphasize that this ward held children as recently as eight years earlier. There are doctors out there who can only imagine kids with DS in this scenario. The medical books would still discuss this as fact. Those broken walls and those weeping dogs are gone now. Terrible memories that, sadly, are still the point of reference for many in the medical community. It's ironic we can close the doors on those types of places, yet we can't open the minds of people who can't or don't want to see how wrong and mistaken that all was. That time when parents were deprived of an immense joy and an earthly understanding of love that transcends any of medicine's rationalities.
Maybe I'm the fool for thinking things have changed. Maybe it is just that the medical field has found other, more effective methods for dealing with "these" children.
Somewhere out there those dogs are still weeping.
image: Sam Javanrouh
This picture was taken at the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. As I mentioned earlier about this photographic blog, it covers the Toronto area, where I grew up. I am very familiar with the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. Growing up it was common to zing a friend with a "you belong in Whitby" or "did you just get out of Whitby?". We were aware of who resided in that place and we imagined all sorts of scenarios about men and women who had come to the edge of their sensibilities and found solace behind the barred windows of the "funny farm".
I never imagined the above scenario. I never imagined the kids. I never thought that a child would be a resident there. I think that is a common oversight. In the comments that ran beneath this picture a few wondered why there would be a children's ward at the psychiatric hospital.
But now I know. I understand who would have looked upon these walls, eight years previous to this picture being taken, when the hospital was still open. This picture was taken just before the demolition crew came in. It had been abandoned and left to shrink into history. That explains the cracked and peeling paint. It's the two dogs that got me, their lack of eyes. It hit me all at once, the children's ward at the mental institution, the weeping dogs. I realized all at once that those children were the ones abandoned at birth because they were going to be a "burden". They were "never going to learn". They would "never know their parents, never communicate". They were born with DS, they had an extra chromosome. Here is a wall in a place that housed the kids society had given up on, had decided they would never get a chance. And so the dogs wept, cried at the waste of a child left to shrink into history. Or was it a compassionate soul blinding them from the what had to be such a sorrowful thing to have to watch.
Let me emphasize that this ward held children as recently as eight years earlier. There are doctors out there who can only imagine kids with DS in this scenario. The medical books would still discuss this as fact. Those broken walls and those weeping dogs are gone now. Terrible memories that, sadly, are still the point of reference for many in the medical community. It's ironic we can close the doors on those types of places, yet we can't open the minds of people who can't or don't want to see how wrong and mistaken that all was. That time when parents were deprived of an immense joy and an earthly understanding of love that transcends any of medicine's rationalities.
Maybe I'm the fool for thinking things have changed. Maybe it is just that the medical field has found other, more effective methods for dealing with "these" children.
Somewhere out there those dogs are still weeping.
image: Sam Javanrouh
2 comments:
Oh my. Thank you.
that was pretty powerful! I had chills while reading it as well.
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