Provincial Mental Home for the Criminally Insane opened in British Columbia, its first forensic psychiatric facility

1919. The Provincial Mental Home for the Criminally Insane is opened in Colquitz on Vancouver Island, and is in operation from 1919 to 1964. It primarily housed men who were deemed “criminally insane” and those labeled as “dangerous” mental patients. Patients at Colquitz came from other mental hospitals, provincial and federal prisons, or criminal courts (Cook et al, 2009). It was the second institution of its kind in Canada (the first being Rockwood Asylum in Kingston, Ontario), although it was only ever a branch of other psychiatric facilities in British Columbia, such as the Public Hospital for the Insane in New Westminster, and the Essondale institution in Coquitlam (Cook et al, 2009). Segregation of the mentally ill and criminals was common in the early twentieth century.

-Erna Kurbegovic and Colette Leung

  • Chunn, D. & Menzies, R. (1998). Out of Mind, Out of Law: The Regulation of “Criminally Insane” Women inside British Columbia’s Public Mental Hospitals, 1888-1973. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 10, 306-337.

  • Cook, S., Trayner, K., Atchison, C., Menzies, R. (2009). The Colquitz Archive: An Exhibition of Documents and Images on the Provincial Mental Home, Colquitz, 1919-1964. The History of Madness in Canada. (Website). Retrieved from http://historyofmadness.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=57&lang=en.

Provincial Mental Home for the Criminally Insane opened in British Columbia, its first forensic psychiatric facility

1919. The Provincial Mental Home for the Criminally Insane is opened in Colquitz on Vancouver Island, and is in operation from 1919 to 1964. It primarily housed men who were deemed “criminally insane” and those labeled as “dangerous” mental patients. Patients at Colquitz came from other mental hospitals, provincial and federal prisons, or criminal courts (Cook et al, 2009). It was the second institution of its kind in Canada (the first being Rockwood Asylum in Kingston, Ontario), although it was only ever a branch of other psychiatric facilities in British Columbia, such as the Public Hospital for the Insane in New Westminster, and the Essondale institution in Coquitlam (Cook et al, 2009). Segregation of the mentally ill and criminals was common in the early twentieth century.

-Erna Kurbegovic and Colette Leung

  • Chunn, D. & Menzies, R. (1998). Out of Mind, Out of Law: The Regulation of “Criminally Insane” Women inside British Columbia’s Public Mental Hospitals, 1888-1973. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 10, 306-337.

  • Cook, S., Trayner, K., Atchison, C., Menzies, R. (2009). The Colquitz Archive: An Exhibition of Documents and Images on the Provincial Mental Home, Colquitz, 1919-1964. The History of Madness in Canada. (Website). Retrieved from http://historyofmadness.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=57&lang=en.