Reaume: From Activists to Archivists

Geof­frey Reaume from York and Uni­ver­sity of Toronto gave a fas­cin­at­ing talk in the His­tory of Health and Medi­cine Lunch­time Sem­inar Series today. “From Act­iv­ists to Arch­iv­ists: Doc­u­ment­ing Mad People’s His­tory Since the 1970s,” explored both the form­a­tion of psy­chi­at­ric sur­viv­ors organ­iz­a­tions from the 1970s as well as the col­lec­tion of arti­facts allow­ing for study of these move­ments.
His talk reminded us of Allen Mark­man in NY, Ken­neth Don­ald­son in Port­land then more dir­ectly of local per­son­al­it­ies such as Mel Stark­man and Don Weitz. Reaume’s talk provided me with a won­der­ful expos­ure to the more human side of the men­tal health world and also put it into the con­text of other groups within soci­ety that battle with nam­ing con­ven­tions. Very poignantly, Reaume also exposed the tre­mend­ously con­ten­tious area of attempt­ing to remem­ber the past when treat­ment has often been under­taken to elim­in­ate such remem­brances.
Reaume is cur­rently engaged in two ongo­ing attempts to ensure that those that have been par­ti­cipants (will­ingly or unwill­ingly) in Toronto asylums past are not for­got­ten. The walls of the old Queen Street Asylum have been the site of local devel­op­ment over the past dec­ade. Recently, the Psy­chi­at­ric Sur­viv­ors Asso­ci­ation of Toronto has been suc­cess­ful in erect­ing a com­mem­or­ative plaque that recog­nizes that the walls were con­struc­ted by the forced labour of patients con­fined to the Asylum. Their role in this con­struc­tion is sig­ni­fic­ant as is that most of it still stands solidly over 150 years after it was con­struc­ted. The wall is highly sym­bolic and a last­ing trib­ute to patients whose exper­i­ence of the sys­tem is worthy of con­tin­ued remem­brance and study. It is how­ever a sym­bol of mixed emo­tions amongst those who have exper­i­enced con­fine­ment. There are calls to remove the reminder of many of the hor­rors exper­i­enced by cli­ents of the sys­tem, even to our cur­rent time. Oth­ers, Reaume among them, seek to real­ize les­sons les­sons learned from past fail­ures and to reflect on society’s atti­tudes towards those denied the abil­ity to express their own wishes.
A second pro­ject is tak­ing place at the site of the former Mim­ico Asylum (the Lakeshore in Eto­bicoke), where a grave­yard con­tain­ing the remains of 1511 patients who dies while con­fined is loc­ated. In the last two years, PSAT has made efforts to uncover grave mark­ers and is still attempt­ing to erect some form of com­mem­or­ative marker for the entire site.
Both of these pro­jects high­lighted Reaume’s mes­sage of sens­it­iv­ity to and respect for people in soci­ety who have been labeled and iden­ti­fied as lesser mem­bers, some­times suf­fer­ing injustice in due to soci­etal naiv­eté or delib­er­ate exclu­sion.