Museum tells story of the Brandon asylum

A new exhibit has been installed at the Brandon downtown museum telling the history of a disastrous fire that destroyed the former mental health hospital.

The Brandon General Museum and Archives added a collection recollecting the 1910 November fire that destroyed the Brandon facility, dubbed at the time as the Brandon Asylum for the Insane.

Four storyboards have been installed on the museum’s wall, weaving old photos and descriptions together about the day of the fire and the repercussions it had in the community. Two framed photos are also part of the collection.

The exhibit was added in advance of the fire’s 115th anniversary, which arrives on Nov. 4.

The effort to capture the historic moment was led by a woman who taught nurses at the facility during the late ‘60s and ‘70s. The woman, Beverley Hicks, also serves on the board of the mental health centre museum, she told the Sun in a recent interview.

The photos were found recently when she and other board members were moving health centre museum inventory out of the former health centre on the north hill to make space for Assiniboine College, she said. Board members decided to create an exhibit with some of the photos they dug up.

“We’re trying to preserve the history,” Hicks said. “Making use of the artifacts in the best possible way we can.”

The photos, and other items, were stored at the north hill building for roughly 20 years. Board members sifted through photos while moving out, and created files with different categories, like items that tell the story of the fire, and others that may be tied to sports or crafts at the facility.

Keith Waterfield, administrator at the Brandon General Museum, made space for the pieces on the museum floor. He said the final product came out very well.

“I think it was beautifully done and organized by Beverley and her team,” Waterfield told the Sun. “It’s an important part of Brandon’s history, and with that building being used for Assiniboine College, it was nice that we were able to get those materials on display at the museum for people to look at it and learn about it.”

Waterfield said he particularly liked seeing a headline from the Brandon Sun in 1910 as part of the storyboard. It adds an element of community and continuity, he said, speaking to the Sun in an interview 115 years later.

“These records that we have of our history, it’s really nice to look back on them,” Waterfield said.

The front page headline of the newspaper, published on Nov. 5, 1910, in all capitalized letters, read: TERRIBLE FIRE WIPED OUT THE HOSPITAL FOR INSANE; and a separate story was titled, THE FAIR BUILDING NOW INSANE ASYLUM.

As the museum’s new storyboards show, back in 1910, following the fire at the mental hospital, patients walked in a crowd down from the north hill. They crossed the Assiniboine River over a bridge on First Street, and walked to their new home, a former fair building located where the Brandon Police Service station sits today.

Two years passed with patients staying at the new location, and in 1912 construction finished on the replacement asylum building. Additions have come since, and the site is now Assiniboine College’s North Hill Campus.

Canvases, black-and-white, depicting this story, were added to the Brandon downtown museum wall in October. Waterfield said he was happy to make space for the history of the mental hospital, which has special importance for Brandon.

“It makes Brandon quite significant, not just in Manitoba, in relation to psychiatric health, but across Canada,” Waterfield said, explaining the asylum was one of the first institutions of its kind across the country.

Hicks worked at the facility, training nurses to communicate with patients. She says it is sad to see how the facility has got a bad rap in recent history — that a lot of positive contribution to Brandon and the city’s history has been overshadowed.

“You think about all the thousands of patients that went through that system, and many of them got better,” she said. “There were many success stories, and when you hear of the stigma these days, that’s kind of sad.”

In the future, exhibits may come such as arts and crafts that were created by some of the patients at the asylum. During the time, some of the projects, due to their quality, were shown at local fairs in town, Hicks said. The items and artifacts are now stored in south Brandon.

The museum hopes to keep a space open for exhibits about the mental hospital for the foreseeable future. Waterfield said he has worked with Hicks on what that may look like.

“I think this is definitely going to be an ongoing relationship between us and Beverley Hicks. I see this as an ongoing partnership.”

The exhibit is expected to stay for a few months before a different topic about the former mental health centre rotates in.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com