THE BATTLEFORDS - Thousands of unmarked graves of patients, prisoners and even staff fill three graveyards on the grounds of Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford (SHNB).
One site has more than 1,500 unmarked graves, another site has 453, and a third has at least 350 graves.
“I know for sure there are 453 souls here,” said Gord Dykstra on July 30 at one of the gravesites concealed by trees and thick bush.
A tall stone pillar stands at the site’s entrance and only about four headstones name the buried. Like a huge wave, however, row upon row of sunken indentations in the ground attest that the earth covers the dead.
At a second gravesite, a stone marker numerically reads 1025, revealing how many people – unclaimed by their families - are buried in just half of the massive site.
“A lot of people are buried here,” said Dykstra, a former guard, social worker and teacher at the now closed youth correctional portion of SHNB.
“It’s a tragedy.”
Only a handful of headstones dot the massive open field of unmarked graves hidden away and surrounded by trees.
A third gravesite has about 350 graves and only a few have headstones.
In the area surrounding the gravesites time has forgotten - and only visible to the discerning eye - are overgrown trails meandering through the sloped rolling hills.
“That’s where the inmates walked,” said Dykstra.
Many people lived at the hospital for up to 40 years and according to folklore, once inside, the patients would never return home.
Dykstra said social services sent children there who were wards of the court.
“They would spend their entire life there,” he said.
“I wonder how many people didn’t deserve to be here, especially the social services kids.”
The hospital
Not far off Highway 16, a two-mile winding treed road leads to the century-old hospital site overlooking the serene North Saskatchewan River valley.
The original facility was located at 1 Jersey Street in the North Battleford Crown Colony a census subdivision near the City of North Battleford.
Hospital for the Insane, Battleford was built between 1911 and 1913 at a cost of about $1,000,000, and opened to patients in February 1914. It was the first mental hospital to be built in Saskatchewan and had 156 beds.
On Feb. 5, 1914, the North Battleford News reported that “On the picturesque banks of the North Saskatchewan River, midway between the City of North Battleford and the Town of Battleford, stands the Saskatchewan Hospital for the insane.”
At the time, mentally ill people were classified as criminals. In its early years the hospital struggled with overcrowding and had the stigma of being a dangerous place.
With no one wanting them when they were alive - or claiming them in death –the patients lived out their lives at the hospital and were buried on the grounds.
There weren’t only mentally ill people housed at the hospital; it also held people who didn’t “fit in” within the community.
According to the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan, the hospital had “hobos, alcoholics and eccentrics” mixed in with the mentally ill and was a place where social rejects and a family’s undesirables were disposed. Family ties with patients were severed as relatives erased the very existence of their mentally ill kinfolk.
In 1946 there were more than 4,000 patients. The number eventually dropped to less than 300 by 1980 after the provincial introduction of community care.
The hospital was the first mental facility in Saskatchewan. It had its own autopsy room and morgue, said Dykstra, adding there were tunnels under the morgue.
Who were the patients?
The hospital, sitting on 2,236-acres, was self-sufficient where both patients and staff lived and died on the grounds.
The walls of the hospital buildings were constructed of brick and the floors and beams of reinforced concrete. The only wood in the massive structure was the doors and window frames.
Dr. James Walter MacNeill, the first superintendent of the hospital, believed in occupational therapy and depended on the patients to keep the grounds and operate the hospital.
In his 1939 annual report he wrote that the patients constructed a new curling rink and a “sterilizer building.”
The patients constructed many new buildings. They built and maintained new roads. They rebuilt pig troughs, painted the bakeshop, and repaired roofs.
Many of the patients were immigrant farmers and worked the fields, planting crops and doing all of the harvesting and threshing. They built a reinforced concrete root house to store crops.
In his 1914-15 annual report, McNeil said the patients cared for the cows and tended to chickens. They planted and harvested 50 acres of potatoes and vegetables. They did the laundry, worked in the bakery and the tailor and mattress shops. The women did needle work and the men made tin toys.
One patient, Emil Schoen, a German immigrant and talented bricklayer, built the chapel. He was also responsible for most of the stonework on the hospital grounds including the gate pillars, retaining walls and bridges.
Now, brick by red brick, the century-old hospital is being torn down but the chapel will be preserved.
Nearby, a state-of-the-art $407-million, 284-bed hospital officially opened in March 2019. The facility includes 188 psychiatric rehabilitation beds and a 96-room secure wing for offenders living with mental health issues.
The hospital also houses those who aren’t serving time and those deemed not criminally responsible for their crime.
SHNB is owned by the Government of Saskatchewan and operated by the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
In the early 1920’s MacNeill successfully fought to have the facility’s name changed and have the patients recognized as people with mental illnesses instead of “insane criminals.”
The Dangerous Lunatics Act was changed in 1922 to the Mental Diseases Act. In 1950, mental illness was finally recognized as a medical condition and provincial mental hospitals were changed from custodial to therapeutic institutions.
In 1971 the hospital stopped burying patients on the grounds.
This story has been updated to indicate that employees and other members of the hospital community make up some of the graves found there.
