Chapter Nineteen
I moved into Pat’s office right across the hall from the administrator’s office on the 15th of December, one day after my 39th birthday. To a callow youth of 20, 39 seems quite old, but to me at that moment, just a few years after completing my training, it seemed that I was far too young. Also the hospital had encountered many problems in recent years. We were short of psychiatric staff and I was facing the retirement of several unit directors in the next few years. The old Civil Service Association of Ontario was reorganizing. Seen as too tame by other members of organized labour, within the next year it reorganized as a formal union, and took on a new name, the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU).
And in the hospital, even the simplest change seemed to take endless negotiation and argument. The most ordinary problems seemed to swell to gargantuan proportions. But I did have some ideas and Pat assured me that he would always be on the other end of the telephone line. I went around to meet my staff and to mark out the boundaries of my territory. Also, I was to replace Pat at a meeting in Kingston to discuss the new approach in the treatment of the mentally retarded. It was called “Normalization” and an expert consultant from Norway was coming to the meeting to discuss it. So I had a few days off over Christmas and New Years and then I would be off to Kingston. I was even offered a ride by a colleague from the Department of Health who was driving down.
More Cars
By 1970 I decided that we needed a new bigger car. The family was growing up and we were taking camping trips and toting heavy stuff to the cottage. The Valiant was getting worn and needed replacing. I looked at the big three domestic automakers and the handling was poor in all but the tail-wag on sudden manoeuvers was particularly bad in the Chevrolet and Ford wasn’t much better. I settled on the Plymouth Fury with a V-8 engine and a heavy-duty suspension. It had belted bias-ply tires that were the compromise with radial ply tires for North America. Within the first 15,000 miles the belts had started to fracture, a common failing at that time. I replaced them with Michelin X radial tires and the handling was much improved and they lasted almost 100,000 miles. Although the Rover was the nicest car to drive, I had to conclude that the Fury was the best car overall that I had owned.
When Mr. Fisher arrived, we parked our cars in the west parking lot in reserved spaces and I noted that he drove a somewhat battered Volkswagen Beetle. Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at any Speed had come out a few years before and was particularly critical of the Chevrolet Corvair that was modeled on the Volkswagen. But Ralph couldn’t publish anything about the Beetle because he was threatened with law suits by Volkswagen.
I commented on my experience with beetles and their funny handling characteristics. Milton remarked: “Oh you mean like the automatic lane change feature?” He added that if you are in a cross-wind and go through a bridge, when you emerge, you are in a different lane. It was a standing joke at the time: “Why does the Beetle have a rounded roof? …so that you can get it back on its wheels when it rolls over.” Several people at the hospital had experience with this.
Life settled into a routine. But change was certainly in the air. During 1969 there was a new director of nursing, Donna Kidd. She was a large and imposing figure standing over my desk complaining about the physicians on staff who were not doing their jobs properly. It was hard to defend some of them. We had unit directors who came in regularly at 0930h or later, took 2 hours for lunch and were gone by about 4 o’clock. I clamped down on this but it was almost impossible to police effectively. I finally tried to call a meeting of unit directors at 0830h each day just to discuss the day’s activities. One or two showed up, sometimes none. When I followed up, I got all kinds of lame excuses for absences. I soon gave this up in disgust.
Another issue that Donna Kidd was particularly concerned about was the doctors’ order books on the ward. It was a hell of a struggle but we finally developed a system that required doctors to write the orders directly on the chart and to review/renew them monthly. I had many discussions with Ken Temple, the administrator but he tended to stay out of most clinical issues. Although Donna Kidd and I were always arguing about something or other, I generally agreed with the changes she was pushing for so I did not try to block her. Also, the department of nursing reported directly to the administrator, not through the medical director as did all other clinical departments. Generally we were looking up. I had had some responses to our ads for new medical staff and we had applied for accreditation at a time when very few mental hospitals had been formally accredited.
The male attendants had been hired more for their brawn than for their treatment skills or training. Dr. Matthew Diamond, the Minister of Health lived in Port Perry and represented the riding of Ontario County which was in our catchment area. Hence it had not been uncommon in the past for constituents who were unemployed to arrive at the hospital and tell us: “Matt Diamond sent me to get a job”. They were seldom refused. However the new policy, endorsed by the Minister, was that all hiring was on skills and qualifications, and that help would be offered to upgrade the skills of staff members who may no longer have the necessary qualifications to do their reclassified job. But people still came looking for jobs and were not happy with the new policy. As late as 1972, I still encountered the odd incident in which disgruntled citizens or staff members claimed to be a personal friend of “Matt” and threatened to get me fired if I didn’t comply with their requests. After a while I obtained the number of the private line to the Minister’s office in Queen’s Park and also his unlisted number in Port Perry. I then would inform such people. “O.K., Do you know the Minister’s number? Would you like to call right now? I can get him for you!” Every one of them declined my offer.
Soon there were proposals for an integrated Nursing department and the old attendant positions were reclassified as nursing assistants. This meant that the attendants would be required to take modified nursing training. A special 10 month course was set up at the nursing school on the grounds. But anyone who has been involved with the labour movement can imagine what kind of furor that caused. It was a baptism of fire for the newly appointed Administrator Mr. Ken Temple.
But somehow it all was sorted out. Attendants who were close to retirement were “grandfathered” as Attendants into the Nursing Department or offered early retirement. Others were required to take the training program but were paid while they did it. Many supervisory positions were classified as “acting” if the incumbent was under-qualified for the job.
In 1970 the Civil Service Association of Ontario was reorganized into a proper union. The new Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU) had taken on a much more aggressive stance. Meetings with administration were much more acrimonious and I was involved in most of the meetings. A new grievance officer had been appointed by the union, a certain Joe Bellissien. From my perspective, he made some of the old-line union leaders look like pussy-cats. In the spring of 1971 both Ken and I were calling for help. He consulted the Personnel Branch and I consulted with Pat Lynes in the Professional Services Branch. When Bellissien realized that they were not getting anywhere with the usual stuff, they shifted their focus onto the director of Nursing Education, Lillian Stegne. They were able to produce evidence that she showed favoritism and discriminated against certain nursing students. The whole thing blew up in the newspapers and in the Legislature. Soon Lillian was transferred to St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital and Ken Temple was transferred to Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital in Thunder Bay.
This was very disruptive to the whole administration and most of us were in a state of shock. The administrator at Lakehead, Milton Fisher was to be transferred to Whitby but could not come until September. I was appointed acting administrator for three months over the summer. It was only with considerable help from the Professional Services Branch that I was able to hang in there. I had had to cancel a planned vacation in early July because the administration of the hospital was in chaos. The psychiatric units were already too autonomous, but now they became even more so. It became impossible to get anyone in administration to do anything out of their normal routine. Most of us were exhausted both emotionally and physically.
I talked to Pat Lynes who got a colleague to cover me while I took an abbreviated vacation. The Psychiatric Hospitals Branch assigned Wayne McKerrow as pro-tem acting administrator until Milton Fisher came. It was a rough summer but we got through it. On the Tuesday after Labour day “Wayne McKerrow introduced me to Milton Fisher. He was somewhat older than I was with grizzled hair that showed a few bits of grey. He walked with a cane and a leg brace and told me later that he had had polio as a child and was left with weak leg muscles. But he made it very clear that he was not in any way handicapped and would not let anyone treat him that way. He was one of the old time administrators with an MHA (Master of Health Administration) as contrasted with an MBA (Master of Business Administration) a degree that dominated the field later.
I worked very hard to develop a good working relationship with Milton. However he was a tough task-master and we seemed to be working at cross purposes sometimes. I remember him saying that in a rigid, stratified organization, sometimes it is necessary to do a dramatic reorganization that breaks up cliques and moves all staff to new locations. We set up a special ad-hoc committee under the chairmanship of the chief psychologist, Terry Alderdice to work out the plan. He had assistance from the Psychology Department at York University and they contributed many radical ideas.
When the plan was presented to the Medical Advisory Committee, it was obvious that they would not accept it. The medical staff group were so upset that their president angrily said that they would refuse to work under it. It went to the point that there was an article in the press that there was a revolt at Whitby. The Ministry moved in. The Medical Staff President had his hospital privileges cancelled and was forced to resign.
The Church of Scientology
As we mentioned, the drastic reforms that were developing had attracted some bad actors. The Church of Scientology was aggressively pursuing evidence of abuse of mental patients in the old mental hospitals. When a group of them visited Whitby I took the position that we had nothing to hide and offered to show them any part of the hospital they wanted to see. They really wanted to interview patients but I could not allow that. We did a tour of all the wards and at the end of it they asked where we did the lobotomies. I pointed out that no lobotomies had been done at Whitby since 1965. They refused to believe me and kept asking me to open doors, which I did. Finally in frustration they left the hospital but one of them sneaked onto a geriatric ward claiming that I had authorized him to speak to patients. He extracted evidence of abuse from an old patient with Alzheimers’ Disease who didn’t even know the time of day.
The next morning there was a big article in the Globe and Mail about people being illegally held in mental hospitals and particularly mentioning our geriatric patient. I immediately phoned the Legal Branch in the Ministry to explain that this person had been here on a public tour and was not authorized to speak to anyone else but me. They immediately responded by threatening suit against the Scientologists and starting an investigation of the cult. Several years later, this resulted in a police raid on the downtown headquarters of the cult that produced sufficient evidence to practically shut down their activities, at least in Ontario.
Reorganization 1972
The task force on reorganization had reported and Mr. Fisher was set to implement it on May 1st (May Day). There was a very complex reorganization plan that involved changing the location of all the units and even changing the staff on each unit to break up the cliques. The old Infirmary became the Geriatric Program and was moved to the admitting wards in the Administration building. The four admitting wards were moved to the location of the four geographic units, all of them in buildings that were much inferior to what they had had before. Milton had instructed the local maintenance department to make as many changes as possible to improve the working conditions. These would usually be assigned to the Public Works Department but as one wag observed: “A little bit slow, a little bit wrong but permanent!”
On May Day, we witnessed a very sad sight. Patients carrying all their worldly goods in green garbage bags to their new ward locations. The ward staff were scurrying around to direct them to the right places. Nursing staff were assigned by the Nursing Department so many patients did not have familiar staff with them. It took a week for things to settle down but we had several patients who kept trying to return to their former wards.
It took some time for the hospital to settle down after this radical change. Pat Lynes had arranged for the director of social work to be replaced and she had been moved to a job in the Branch. It fell to Milton and me to find a replacement. During the reorganization, the social work department had offices in the administration building and several rather disgruntled staff had left so it was opportune. There were a large group of ‘clinical historians’ whose job it was to interview admitted patients and take a clinical history. Some histories were quite long and detailed and I complained to the staff that the length of the history was in inverse proportion to the likelihood that it would ever be read.
Hence during this reorganization, we moved all the historians into the social work department as social work assistants. This did not sit well with some of them. One in particular, was in tears in my office. When I explained that we could not change any of this, she stormed out and quit her job. Someone told me that she was waiting tables in a local restaurant.
The position of Director of Social Work was duly advertised and we interviewed a man from Baltimore named Joe Altopede. When he was offered a two year contract he asked if it was renewable. Milton answered: “it is renewable but if you do your job right you will not want to renew it”. Joe got the message and he went at his job with a vengeance. Of course he was very unpopular but many of the social work staff agreed with him so he had support. I remember Joe coming to me one day to ask about Conrad Carrington being promoted. Con was black and I realized that in Baltimore this would be a real problem. I assured him that Con was well respected and he should get a promotion.
Joe left after two years and we then hired Sam Sussman who was with an agency in Toronto. He was much more the negotiator and worked well with the staff. We became good friends and when he moved on to the London Psychiatric Hospital a few years later, we kept up the relationship and worked on several projects together.
The 4 Phase Program. Expansion of the Adolescent Program
Dr. Naomi Rae-Grant had been named the Provincial Director of Children’s Services. She introduced a comprehensive program for the Metro Toronto region in 4 phases. One was to be located at the Lakeshore hospital and one at Whitby. They were:
- Acute cooling out services that related to the Juvenile and Family Court on Jarvis Street. This was provided by the holding unit at the court.
- A unit for kids in acute distress. They had to be picked up by the unit immediately and given intensive care. Numbers would be small because staffing ratios were very high.
- Continuing treatment to stabilize and help the kids gain some control of their lives. Our existing unit served this purpose.
- Urban and Rural Re-entry. These were to be foster home type placements to help them reintegrate with family and community resources.
I had done consultations there while I was at Lakeshore so I knew the family court well. We were assigned Cottage 5 for this acute crisis unit. It needed extensive renovations to make it suitable and the first contractor left the job incomplete. A new contractor was hired but we had to conduct regular inspections to see that the work was done properly. On one tour we spied a concrete block lying on the floor. When we picked it up there was a stub of pipe sticking up that should have been closed off below the floor. This delayed things for almost a year.
A new contractor was hired and finally the job was finished. We had planned for 16 patients in Cottage 5 with a staff of about 30. As we started to admit some very disturbed kids we soon realized that our staffing was inadequate. We needed a 1 to 1 staffing ratio on days and afternoons and at least 4 or 5 staff at night. After we got increased staffing we decided that the maximum we could take would be about 8 patients. At the Thistletown Hospital, they had set up a course to train Child Care Workers. We decided to change over to child care workers also. We did a lot of hiring in a short time.
The Alcoholism Program
George Blake, a senior psychologist had been working with patients who had alcohol problems for several years. He was assigned space in the old nursing school buildings for a new Alcoholism Program. Before long he was getting referrals from the General Motors plant in Oshawa because they had big problems with workers drinking heavily on weekends and coming in very hung-over for their Monday shift. People in the area became wise to this and when buying a new car they would always check the date of manufacture. If it was a Monday car, they would usually decide on another one. The problem with this was that as long as George’s program was on the grounds, these people had to be registered as out-patients of WPH. We finally worked out a system whereby they were registered only to the program but eventually the program was moved to Oshawa under the aegis of the Oshawa Civic Hospital.
I had been giving a series of lectures to the student nurses on the main issues in psychiatry and mental health care. It formed the basis for much of my historical research in later years. I did this for several years even after I became medical director. I had also given many talks on mental health issues while I was in the clinic. Then about 1972 George Blake invited me to set up an eight week course on mental health issues at Durham College in Oshawa. It was well received and we repeated it the next year.
Rehabilitation Services
One of the programs that was set up was a rehabilitation service with a large workshop where patients were assigned small parts assembly and packaging jobs for retailers like Canadian Tire and toy and novelty shops. Because there was not additional budget for this we could only pay them 2¢ an hour. I remember that we had a patient who was a librarian and we asked her to reorganize the patient library, buy and catalogue new books and encourage distribution to the wards. I rather apologetically commented that we could only pay her 2¢ an hour. She rose to her full height and remarked: “I will work for nothing. I will volunteer”. She did an excellent job too.
Soon the small assembly program became popular with retailers and we were working hard to keep up with demand. When the Auto Workers Union heard of this, they said we had to pay the minimum wage or we would be shut down. The director of the program and I met with the union representatives in Oshawa. She tried to explain that we had no money in the budget and besides this was a government facility and rehabilitation was very important for our patients. When we seemed to be reaching an impasse, I intervened. I said that we were not competing with Canadian workers. If we didn’t do this, these jobs would be sent to south-east Asia where they can get cheap labour. This argument satisfied them and it did result in an increase in pay for our workers.
Patient Rights and the 1972 Federal Election
A federal election was called in 1972 in which Pierre Trudeau was seeking another mandate. In due course an enumerator appeared and we arranged for her to go on the wards. When did not come back to see us and we found that she had gone on the nearest ward, taken one look at the patients and had left without any attempt to take names. Milton and I were outraged because the National Elections Act had been changed to allow mental patients and prisoners to have the vote. Milton phoned the returning office in Oshawa and demanded that someone else be sent. When that was refused and election day was approaching he said that if the mountain would not come to Mohammed, Mohammed would go to the mountain. We rented school busses and began a shuttle to the returning office with our patients. It was chaos and finally all the busses were turned away. After the election we registered a formal complaint with the Federal department in Ottawa and received a positive response.
In the election, the Liberals only got a minority government so within 2 years another election was called. The local returning office was in touch with us immediately and asked us for a list of patients who would be eligible to vote. We had the wards prepare lists and they were sent to the returning office who enumerated them all without any fuss. They even set up a polling station in the hospital that was quite popular on voting day. Milton asked the returning officer what had changed. He was told that the previous returning office had been removed from office and he was the replacement. A victory for our side.
Some Anecdotes
There were funny things happening all the time and our patients were often at the centre of it. Quite often, patients would walk up to the Base Line road at the end of the property and watch the traffic in the real world go by. I cannot be sure this story is true – it may be apocryphal. One day as two patients were leaning on the fence when a car lost a wheel. The wheel bounced along into the ditch and the car skidded to a stop near the patients. The driver retrieved his wheel but realized that he had lost all the wheel nuts and could not put the wheel back on. One of the patients suggested that he take one wheel nut from each of the other wheels. Three nuts would be enough to get him to the local garage where he could get it fixed. The driver said: “that’s a good idea; I never would have expected it from you.” The patient drew himself up to his full height and indignantly replied: “I may be crazy but I am not stupid!”
On another occasion we had a patient who had been forbidden to drive but would take a car if it was left open with keys in it. Once he stole a staff member’s car while its owner was cleaning it and had gone inside to get something. Our patient was finally caught by the police trying to get onto the 401, headed for parts unknown. On another occasion, a pizza truck had stopped at a ward to deliver pizza. Our patient jumped into the truck and took off down the Base Line road toward Ajax. He had an abrupt stop when he went into the ditch and all the pizza boxes slid forward and buried him. When the police found him he was in pizza heaven.
There were very sad events too. It was a time when we were just learning about these new drug treatments for schizophrenia. They tended to produce obesity and type-two diabetes and the patient’s health suffered. Also patients were no longer sensitive to the cold and on a cold day we often had people going out inadequately dressed and becoming hypothermic. I got a call one day about a patient who was found unconscious with a temperature of 29??. The staff called me for help and I suggested a cool bath that was just about body temperature. As the patient responded, they wrapped her in warm blankets and after a while she seemed none the worse for her experience. Another patient tragically wandered off and disappeared. His body was not found until after the first frost had killed all the leaves in a nearby pumpkin patch. There was an inquest about this that both I and Milton attended.
A patient that I got to know quite well was known for being able to escape the closed wards. She would head to the highway and hitch a ride with long-distance truckers to wherever they were going. One time we got a call from Edmundston N.B. where she had gone to the police and asked for a ride back to Whitby. I was tempted to say that she got there, she could get herself back but I was reminded that this would not go over well with the local authorities. We arranged an inter-province transfer for her return.
Sometime later, I was walking by the women’s pavilion when I saw her walking along with a decided limp. I went to help her and she said that she had been trying to grab a drainpipe near a second story window and had slipped and fallen. I said: “why would you do that? The wards are now open, you could have just walked down the stairs.” “Yea”, she said “things aren’t the same since you opened the wards.” I guess the challenge was the thing.
New Dining Hall and Food Service
Plans for a new dining hall had been in the works for several years. Dr. Lynes had started it and when I took over, Public Works (DPW) said it would be another 2 years before it could be started. The old kitchen was attached to the dining hall and at lunch and supper it was a chaotic scene as men who were working on the farm came in unwashed and dirty so that the dining hall was very unsanitary. Many patients refused to eat there and pizza sales soared. I had arranged for the adolescents to eat on the ward because we did not want them in that atmosphere. A special food service had been set up for them.
This proposal was creeping through the approval process very slowly. Finally in desperation I called the Medical Officer of Health, whom I knew quite well, to inspect our kitchens. He duly sent a team of inspectors who went over it carefully and then I waited for the report. Finally I called the MOH and asked where the report was. He replied that he had not delivered it because we were a public institution and if we were a private concern he would have to close it down. I immediately replied: “Could I have that in writing?” He was quite surprised but did furnish a report that I duly sent to Queens Park. Finally, after much delay we got renovations to the kitchen. We also had patients who worked on the farm return to the ward before coming to meals. Everything it seemed was a struggle.
The Geriatric Service
In the 1972 reorganization, we had moved the patients in the Medical Units to the former Admitting wards, part of the administration building. The Unit Director was a psychiatrist who was close to retiring age and I had the unpleasant task of explaining to him that we were planning to hire a new director who would likely have geriatric and occupational therapy skills. We were very fortunate in recruiting Margo Raven who was a physiotherapist with geriatric experience. She immediately set to work to train the nursing staff and to press for more OTs.
Many of these patients had been totally bed-ridden with the usual problems with bed sores and other physical problems. We hired Dr. Rudnick, a family physician from Oshawa to make rounds and provide treatment as necessary. Margo took the position that all patients must be out of bed for at least part of the day. We bought supportive chairs and Hoyer (mechanical) lifts so that all patients could have baths regularly. Trying to lift heavy patients out of the deep bathtubs on the old medical units was a terrible chore that meant that patients were not bathed with any regularity and many staff were treated for back trouble. The whole mood on the new service was improved and the claims to the Workers Compensation Board for back injuries among the staff declined dramatically.
Margo wanted to start a therapeutic pub. The idea was that a small portion of wine would be given to each patient just before the supper hour. Patients with alcohol problems were given a non-alcoholic drink. We had to get approvals through the Mental Hospitals Branch because alcohol was strictly forbidden on government property. This took some time but Margo was very creative by calling on her previous colleagues in Toronto where therapeutic pubs had been started and finally, after two years we got approvals. I remember attending the first pub night and looking at so many happy faces among patients I had known. However I was not offered a drink as staff could not drink on duty.
We had one unfortunate incident where a patient on an old stretcher fell off, fracturing her hip. The side-rail had collapsed. We then invested in the latest stretchers with secure side-rails and we upgraded virtually all the equipment on the wards. This did a lot for staff morale as well. We were on a roll.
Renovations to the Pavilions
The pavilions dated from the 1917 construction period and had not had significant renovations since. They had been set up so that all patients could be under observation at all times and this meant that, for example, there were no doors on the lavatory stalls and anyone walking down the central corridor could see a row of knees in the washrooms as they went by. Also, the central corridor was about 12’ wide and 12’ high. This meant that it was difficult to have a conversation across the corridor; you had to twist around to talk to the person beside you — reminiscent of my days at the OH Toronto when I was in training.
We were all disgusted with the problems and Milton and I talked to Doug McGregor to see if our own trades group could do something. This was a job that they were supposed to leave to DPW but they still came up with a plan. We did some assessments in 1975 and began the work. Construction was very difficult because the inside walls were at least a foot thick made of Spanish tile. It took a jack hammer to get through them. It was very noisy but finally we were making progress.
I had many ideas that we incorporated into the plan. The washrooms were gutted and completely rebuilt to give patient privacy. Since we now had both men and women on the wards, we had to have separate washrooms and we moved the nursing station into a new space in the corridor that also broke up the long tunnel effect. I also wanted the corridor ceiling lowered to a more normal 8 or 9 feet and I had ideas that we could set up conversation groups so that the central passage was more patient and visitor friendly.
There was a lot of rubble so they had placed a chute from a second floor window to a dumpster box on the ground. One day, when people from Public Works were doing an inspection, they were walking with Doug McGregor the assistant administrator, when a great rattle of rubble went down the chute. Doug replied quite nonchalantly: “Oh we had a ceiling come down”.
Reorganization 1976
By this time we recognized that the rather drastic reforms in 1972 had actually been a block to some of the progress we were making. For one thing our hopes of gaining accreditation were now far off. Many staff had quit after 1972 and we were short of medical staff again. We decided to do a better job in 1976.
This was only a few years after NASA had sent the moon mission in 1969. They had used a targeted planning exercise to beat the USSR from getting there first. It involved critical path analysis and target dates for all events. We had full cooperation from the clinical staff and Mr. Fisher stayed in the background with regular reports from me. We planned it over a 10 day period. By this time we had several empty cottages so after some renovation and cleaning up, we moved the wards on separate days so that we would not have the ‘refugee look’ of 1972. It went much more smoothly and within a year we were able to apply for accreditation.
The accreditation team was headed by Dr. Charles Roberts whom I had known from my days in Montreal and Toronto. He was the first chief of the newly established Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in 1966. I remember our conversation after the survey was completed. I said that my mandate was to bring Whitby into the 20th century and I often wondered if it was possible. Charles said: “Well John, if you don’t do it, who’s going to do it?” this stuck with me for the rest of my career.
More Cars
By this time the Rover 2000 was showing its age and rust had become a problem. Cars in those days were not designed for the heavy doses of road salt that were used in the winter. I remember that when I bought the Fury our intake coordinator, Dr. Ed Greszczyszn had bought a new Ford station wagon. I was wondering if I had made the right choice until 3 years later when he discovered that corrosion had caused the firewall to separate from the frame. The car was a write-off. Then my rusty Fury suddenly looked much better.
I set about cleaning up and repainting the Rover. I stripped all the chrome parts from it including the grille and cleaned it up and painted it with primer. So the car was quite piebald with red primer on the lower part and the original off-white paint on the upper part. One day on the way home I was stopped by the police who were checking cars that might be unsafe to drive. They led me to a large compound north of Pickering which was partly full of old cars in various stages of dilapidation. As I watched, they jacked up the front end of one car and a wheel fell off. Other cars were towed away and the owners offered a ride home. The Rover passed inspection but they cautioned me to get it cleaned up and painted as soon as possible. With the help of my boys we completed this in one weekend.
But I was soon thinking that I needed a new car. I was particularly attracted to a Mazda RX2 a model with a Wankel engine. I cannot describe the technical details but it has a central rotor with 3 combustions on each full rotation. There are no cylinders or valves. It was part of a revolution in the auto industry that included ‘just in time deliveries’ and ‘zero defect rate’. This was turning the auto industry upside down again because they could not compete.
I went to the Mazda dealer in Whitby and turned my Rover in on the Mazda RX2. It was a fun car to drive but I soon found that its handling did not match the Rover. I remember that on one rainy day I took an exit ramp too fast and skidded right over onto the entry ramp on the other side. Fortunately there was nothing coming and I was able to get back to the right ramp. Also gradually over the next couple of years I discovered about the corrosion properties that these cars have. The Japanese steel was prone to corrosion and they were using an electrostatic process to apply the primer. It didn’t work. I came to understand Ed Greszczyszn’s problem with the rusty Fords because they were using the same undercoating system.
The Chaplaincy Service
In the early years of the 20th century many people had turned away from religion; it had become perfunctory and irrelevant to many. Mental health professionals and others with a scientific background had become agnostic as well. Then in the 1960s a movement started that declared “God is dead’ and this led to many reforms in the churches and also in the chaplaincy services. This was very divisive but also led to many changes.
The hospital chaplaincy service at Whitby consisted of a priest from a local Anglican church, a Catholic priest who was only there to pronounce the last rites and a rabbi from an Oshawa synagogue who only came if a Jewish patient requested it. The Anglican priest was retiring and we were looking for a new chaplain. We approached the Toronto Hospital Chaplaincy Service and were contacted by the Rev. Lawrence Wilmot who came to Whitby and agreed to become our chaplain. This tied us in with the Toronto service headed by the Rev. Bert Messiah – a very appropriate name.
Lawrence Wilmot, who preferred to be called Larry, was a go-getter. He organized regular services in a room that we set up as a chapel and formed much closer relationships with the Catholic and Jewish chaplains who began to come and offer services as well. Larry was willing to work with anyone who was willing to discuss spiritual matters and this helped many patients who had lost interest in religion.1 By this time, the whole tenor of hospital life seemed to be subtly shifting to a more caring and compassionate one.
Change of Administrators
One day Milton called me into his office and said that he had been appointed the new administrator of the Queen Street Mental Health Centre and would be moving shortly. Whitby would be getting a new administrator, Mr. Ken Sheehan from Alberta. Ken was quite a guy. Compared to Milton he was a bit of a cowboy. He quickly set about getting to know the patients and the staff on the wards. He very much encouraged the renovations that we were undertaking and was fairly blunt with the Ministry of Government Services (the new name of the Department of Public Works).
He also decided that we would have a banquet for all patients and staff on Christmas Day and that he and I would carve the turkeys and serve the people who came through the line. I must have carved about 20 turkeys that day. It was a change for my family. Usually we had had a late breakfast and a family day. I was up early and didn’t get back to share Christmas with the family until about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. However that was Ken’s way and everybody appreciated it.
Suicide
Suicide is a constant problem in mental health facilities and over the years we had had our share. The need for an inquest was determined by the coroner who reviewed all death certificates. If the death was due to natural causes, no inquest would be called. But deaths in public institutions always required an inquest and the medical director and the attending physician provided the testimony from the hospital.
In the 1960s and ‘70s they were conducted by the local coroner with relatively little formality but in the 1970s the chief coroner in Toronto instituted many reforms that soon applied everywhere. They became much more legalistic and litigious so both parties came with lawyers and the proceedings took much longer. The 5 person jury would provide a series of recommendations that the presiding coroner usually made mandatory on the institution and expected a report on how they had been implemented.
A man on certificate at Whitby was constantly asserting that he didn’t need to be there and as soon as his security was relaxed, he would take off home. Since his parents had been unable to deal with his behaviour at home they were very upset and demanded that we take him back immediately. I met with the family several times and was unable to persuade them that our patients could not be kept locked up but sooner or later the rehabilitation required that they must be allowed off the ward to attend programs or to see if they were improving.
Finally, when he had taken off home again, the angry parents refused to bring him back and said they would find other help for him. A couple of weeks later he bought a rifle and shot himself behind the furnace at home. The family were outraged and demanded an inquest in Toronto. When it was called, we discovered that the coroner was known to us. Several years before, she had brought her husband to Whitby on a certificate she had signed herself and a second certificate signed by her paramour.
The attending physician had come to me saying that he could not find any evidence of psychosis and he should be discharged. But I said that this behaviour was very unprofessional and I called the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) to complain. The Registrar was Dr. Johnny Johnston whom I got to know later when I was in Hamilton. He sent it to the complaints committee but in those days the internal committees were quite secretive and tended to favour the doctor, rather than the complainant. No action was taken but Johnny said he had marked it on her record.
So with the inquest called, I phoned Pat Lynes and asked for help. He immediately knew the coroner concerned. He said “Oh, That’s the ocelot lady.” Apparently she kept a pet ocelot that she took out for walks. Milt Fisher called the Legal Branch and we were provided with top-notch lawyers to help us fight the case. When the inquest proceeded, it was clear that the coroner had a twofold agenda. One was punishing hospitals that didn’t keep their patients locked up, and advancing strong gun control.
The inquest took a week and there are many sub-tales here. But finally the jury came back with a balanced finding that recognized that hospitals could not keep people locked up and also that the family was partly responsible for not keeping a careful eye on their son who managed to buy the gun without their knowledge. We were happy with the result.
Ken Sheehan decided to hire a new psychologist Frank Mustin. Frank and I became good friends. He was from Ottawa and had a large yacht at a marina on the St. Lawrence River. We went there one weekend and had a good sail. He also loaned me a new book by Richard Bolles entitled: What Color is your Parachute? It was a guide to professional job hunting but had many useful points including when to tell when it was time to leave your present job before you were fired or demoted. I found that particularly helpful both in my transfer to the Program Advisory Branch and later when I decided to move from the Ministry to Hamilton.
Applying to Kingston for the Medical Director Position
I felt that I had had a very successful term as medical director at Whitby and when John Pratten retired from his post at the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, I decided to apply for the position. At first I had to keep it from my secretary because she very much wanted me to stay. But the process in Kingston dragged on and I got weekly reports from the administrator that they were waiting for approvals from Queens University and from the various other institutions in Kingston. I took my family to Kingston with the idea of looking for houses and sizing up the city. They were not impressed. Fran was particularly disturbed that we would have to take the boys out of school when they were approaching college age.
Finally I called the administrator to say that I wanted to withdraw my application. He was very upset and said that the director of mental health services particularly wanted me to take the job because they wanted someone who could shake up the somewhat hide-bound attitudes in the hospital. I discussed it with Ken Sheehan who was getting fed-up with Ontario and was thinking of going back to Alberta. But he agreed that I should take the job. When I still demurred, Ken Sheehan invited me to a meeting in his office. The Director of Mental Health Services suddenly stepped out from behind the door and gave me a good dressing down. It was quite a scene. Finally he told me that I could not stay at Whitby. I would be transferred to the Professional Services Branch in the Ministry. Pat Lynes was the director and would be very happy to take me on. He knew little about the circumstances of my transfer but he made no reference to it so we let it go.
Notes:
1 In Europe in the Middle ages, the mentally ill were believed to be alienated from the world and religion. The physicians who looked after them were called ‘alienists’ a name that stuck even into the 20th century.