Beyond that brief history, everyone from HELP drove over and we just progressivly worked our way through the place, the old laundry rooms, the caged stair wells, the A, B, C floors--each room oozing a creep that seeped in through the eyes and other senses. Old wheelchairs parked by large windows with ply wood nailed over the glass, smudged handprints on the walls, toilets ripped out of the ground and cluttering the floor of the large bathrooms on the old psych ward, floors rotting and creaking with wooden voices, the strange grafitti scrawled in black on the white walls, and the eerie isolation chambers in the deep basement--small holes scratched into thin, painted glass windows for observation. I found a room with a small collection of books thrown on the floor by the closet. I took one called 'the Sojourner,' but I don't know if it's any good. I took pictures, but I am deeply dissatisfied with how they turned out, as if there was any way I could capture the feeling of that place. I am sad I will not get the chance to go back, I don't think. The doors are being blocked and the place is being prepared for demolition in October, they say. We may have been the last tour to pass through. That night Dayna and I went over to Crystal's place for a barbeque and a closing to our lives together with our work peers. I hope to see them all again some day.
Saturday we debriefed in the morning at Nickle Lake, then went to the museum of Weyburn, which has a showcase of silver collected obsessively by a landowner in his worldly travels. He also had a cow that gave birth to a calf with eight legs. The body of the calf was split in two with three legs along each side and the last two of the eight legs were sprouted from the back of the calf like wings, or some strange spider. It lived for a week and a half; after it died, the owner had it stuffed and used to have it placed at the foot of his bed so he could throw his work clothes on it before he tucked in--a bit of an eccentric fellow. The calf is now a fixture in the museum. Also in the museum, there were little sections set up like scenes that you may have found in the early part of last century. There was a living room, a general store, a barber shop, a clothing store, a church, a classroom, a beauty saloon--interesting to see and move around through. Beyond that, they had a whole room on the Souris Valley. Photographs of each graduating year of the nursing school lined the wall from 1934 to the late sixties. There was a bed set up with a nurse manikin watching over it; there was a display of old 'medicines,' old restraints, vein strippers, operating tools, lab equipment, and a spread of laminated pages with very early photographs of the building's construction, patient life, nurse life, farm life, articles on the institution, and an interesting article on the art of one patient who created a mural in the basement--the mural was crumbling off the wall and the article cried out for its preservation. I saw no mural on my tour. There were some pieces in the museum that were produced from early art therapy at Souris Valley; one of the pieces was very intriguing. I took a picture of a picture of the operating room circa 1930-40: Home of the labotomy.
Lastly in the museum, I scanned through pictures of the town over a century old, and quickly saw its development through time. I walked out with a new sense of comprehension, like a higher level of seeing the town--knowing it better. There was a strong history behind all the blandness. Jade, from my group, picked up a copy of the documentary made on the Souris Valley Institution at the museum, which we watched later that night. It told of more strange practices, of the thin line between patient and staff, molestation, ECTs as punishment--an artists group came through and put on a huge performance piece inside a few years ago, which is largely what was being documented. I am trying to find a way to get a copy.
These pauses in my typing, which I am so cleverly covering up, are due to some extremely intense scenearios that occured in our house today. I am afraid I cannot type about them right now--and afraid is the right word because I have heard a rumor about another participant that got sent home because he was posting some thoughts on private group activity. I will have to include these things in a day or so, or after my next entry.
We toured out to a farm on Sunday. Interesting before I found out about this guys GM crops, then it got a little depressing. He had boxes and boxes of empty petroleum hydrocarbon spray containers for his canola crop, and full containers of 'Roundup.' It was sad because I had thought that Katimavik was all about progressive education of ideas like healthy living and environmental care. I think our PL just doesn't really get it. If anything, the tour should have been paired with one to an organic farm: Just my thoughts. There was a really friendly dog that lived at the farm--Buddy. We quickly became friends and he would run over to me, dive while running so that he would slide accross the ground on his back, and stop right by my feet so that I had to rub him down and nose him. I found a wood tick on my neck shortly after befriending Buddy.
I am fully packed, my bags have gone ahead of me, and I am ready to head to rotation camp. We are being held up because of this disturbance which I can't get into right now. Wait on it and I will elucidate later.
LOVE - Tristan
before || after
