Ex-residents, artists at odds on Huronia’s future
‘Horror’ not ‘magnificent site’ in minds of former residents of infamous institution
Chunks of Cindy Scott’s childhood were walled off, spent in an old brick building on the shores of Lake Simcoe.
Now in her 50s, Scott wants those walls torn down as the government prepares to open consultations on what remains of the Huronia Regional Centre.
“That’s what we need to do. Completely gone,” said Scott, who was institutionalized there twice before she turned15. “We do not want to see that building anymore.”
Her vision is at odds with a sweeping reimagining of the site as an arts destination in the vein of the Banff Centre, championed by a cadre of well-known figures, including Margaret Atwood and visual artist Charles Pachter.
Huronia Cultural Campus Foundation, the group proposing the plan, has engaged bureaucrats and politicians in discussions since forming in late 2014.
But the one group critics say should be paramount in the discussions, former residents like Scott, has so far felt left out.
Pachter stresses the arts centre won’t deny the site’s horrific past or exclude former residents. He speaks of its future, including dreams of artist residences, art galleries and symphony concerts, in glowing terms.
“The land and the site itself is magnificent,” he said.
It’s a characterization that turns Marilyn Dolmage’s stomach. Once a social worker there and sister of a former resident, the longtime advocate served as the litigation guardian on a class-action lawsuit against the province alleging decades of abuse.
“It is superficially a beautiful place,” she said. “But those lawns were not enjoyed the way children enjoyed lawns . . . imagine driving into that place to go to work, as I did for five years, and never seeing a child out playing.”
Open from 1876 to 2009, at its peak, 2,600 children and adults were housed in the facility for people with developmental disabilities.
“Inside those buildings, in a giant room would be 50 to 75 men with no clothes on, masturbating, defecating, everything. And somebody following up with some kind of a mop,” she said.
“My brother was in one of those buildings and never got out of a crib and died from all the illnesses he got. That’s what we see when we see those buildings,” Dolmage said.
Pachter points to the ongoing revitalization of Regent Park and Humber College’s Lakeshore campus, the former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, as models for redeveloping lands with fraught histories.
“If you spend all of the effort focusing on the suffering you can’t move forward,” he said. “The other thing of course is in 10 years many of those people will be gone, and in 20 years I’ll be gone, and nobody knows what’s going to happen to that land still.”
For Kate Rossiter, a professor who works with former residents in her research and met with the foundation before taking maternity leave, the longevity of former residents is irrelevant.
“It’s absolutely crucial to include and honour the survivors who are here now,” she said. “It’s also really important to think about how to honour the people who did not survive Huronia, the people who didn’t make it out alive. And there were thousands.”
Consulting former residents takes time, effort and energy, but it will result in better outcomes, she said.
“They’re messy and they’re difficult and not unified,” she said of the talks. “It can be sometimes a hard road to get there but (survivors) are articulate and creative and have important ideas to share.”
In the foundation board’s view, survivors are not left out; rather, it’s a slow-moving process and those working on the project are not full time, so fitting everyone in takes longer. Chair Fred Larsen admits the outreach hasn’t been robust, but said it will be going forward.
So far the outreach has included a meeting last April between Dolmage, Scott and others, a smaller meeting with Pachter, Scott and other former residents, and meetings with community care groups and the Creative Spirit Art Centre, which holds a collection of paintings done by Huronia residents.
In the year since that meeting, Dolmage has fought to get answers about the process and concerns raised in July about sewer lines running through the cemetery.
Since forming, the foundation group has obtained site surveys from the province and been granted $90,000 in grants and funds from the province and $50,000 from Orillia City Council for their projects.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure wrote in an emailed statement that it will hold consultations on the site’s future this year, inviting input from the community and former residents.
Dolmage worries progress made to right more than 100 years of wrongs, including an apology from Premier Kathleen Wynne and a $35-million settlement in the class-action suit, will be undone if former residents are left out of the discussions.
“We have to learn from the mistakes of the past, not gloss them over as wonderland.” With files from Star staff