Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
Mimico Asylum
The history of this institution begins on January 20, 1890, when the Mimico Branch Asylum, as it was then known, opened its doors to 116 patients from Toronto. Established to house “the chronic insane” from across the province, the Asylum was situated on 60 acres of land to the west of Toronto, just outside of the village of Mimico on the shore of Lake Ontario. The Mimico site was chosen both for its centrality to other provincial asylums and for its healthy, tranquil rural location. It also included the 125 acre North Farm situated near the main hospital grounds, and after 1903, the adjacent McNeill Farm of approximately 73 acres. As its name suggests, the Asylum was initially established as a branch of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto (as then known) located at 999 Queen Street West. By 1894, however, the province concluded that it was not economically viable for a single site to assume responsibility for the province’s entire population of chronic patients. Consequently, Mimico was made an independent institution with its own territorial catchment area and renamed the Mimico Asylum. Mimico’s catchment area comprised the counties of Peel, Simcoe, Ontario, Victoria, and Peterborough, and the districts of Muskoka, Parry Sound, Nippissing, Algoma, Thunder Bay, and Rainy River.
Like all other provincial asylums, the Mimico Asylum was administered by the Office of the Inspector of Prisons and Charities, which was a part of the Department of the Provincial Secretary. After 1930, however, responsibility for these institutions was transferred to the provincial Department of Health. Overseen by a variety of branches and divisions within the Department’s jurisdiction, the hospital continued to operate under its auspices until Health Minister Dennis Timbrell made the decision to close the facility effective September 1, 1979. Click here for more...
