Phoenix Rising - Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto

Torture at St. Thomas
Dear Editors:
I am very happy to see the problems
and issues discussed in your
magazine finally being addressed.
I am originally from Windsor,
Ontario, and was first incarcerated
in the Ontario Hospital in St. Thomas
two weeks before my fourteenth
birthday, in 1964. My introduction
to the place was being put
in seclusion and having my head
shaved bald. Then I was dragged to
the ward office, where my arms
were placed in an arm-bar position
up behind my back and my nose was
pinched so I'd have to open my
mouth to breathe. When I opened
my mouth, the goons poured Epsom
salts down my throat. This was to
make me shit all over myself in the
"Pokey," or seclusion room, to
which I was then returned. My
clothes were torn from my body.
The seclusion room had no drinking
water and no toilet. You had to
deposit your excrement on the floor.
There was a steam radiator and a
window covered with shutters made
of heavy steel mesh. The windows
were generally kept open between
the shutters, and the patient
couldn't close them. As you were
kept naked, you had to run in circles
and do calisthenics to keep warm on
winter nights. But sometimes they
sealed the room up tight and turned
the heat up all the way; with no
water to satisfy your thirst, the
drugs that parched your throat
added to the torture. At best you
might be able to lap the urine off the
floor.
I'll swear affidavits to anything I
say on this subject, and will assume
legal responsibility. I was in St.
Thomas till I was eighteen years old,
and since then I have been in Oak
Ridge, Penetang, eight times, on remands
and involuntary committals
from prisons and jails. I've served
one penitentiary term in the US, and
I'm finishing my second pen bit in
Canada. I've also served a reformatory
term in Ontario. However, I
must say the penitentiary and reformatory
never held a candle to the
hardship I've experienced in mental
institutions. And this began when I
was fourteen years old, so penitentiaries
are like water off a duck's
back.
Sincerely yours,
Alton McCorquodale
William Head Institute
Victoria, British Columbia
I
II
It's our birthday.
Don't miss our
15th anniversary issue.
January, 1987
Phoenix Rising / 4