History of Queen Street Site

The Provincial Lunatic Asylum sits on lands described as the council grounds and camping site of the First Nation, the Mississaugas of the New Credit.

January 26

The Asylum opens its doors to its first 211 patients, transferred from the temporary asylum, a former jail.

January 1

Undermined by board members, the asylum's first Superintendent, Dr. John Scott, lasts only three years.

The entire property is enclosed with masonry walls—built with patient labour—parts of which still stand as designated heritage structures.

Facility is renamed "Asylum for the Insane, Toronto.”

Dr. Daniel Clark takes over as Medical Superintendent, publishing and offering lectures on insanity from 1882.

Mimico Asylum opens, built under Daniel Clark’s supervision and originally operating as a branch of Queen Street.

Medical Superintendent Dr. C.K. Clarke recommends selling and relocating the overcrowded, poorly maintained facility, without success.

C.K. Clarke establishes in-house training for nurses and strengthens ties between the asylum and U of T medical school, where he became the first Professor of Psychiatry.

Now named Hospital for the Insane, use of the word “hospital” indicates a shift toward a medical approach to care and treatment of people with mental illness.

Now named the "Ontario Hospital, Toronto."

The Queen Street Administration Building is complete.

The hospital starts offering occupational therapy, physiotherapy and psychotherapy to help patients get better in the hopes of being discharged.

Name changes to "Queen Street Mental Health Centre."

Despite controversy over its social and architectural heritage, the 1850 asylum is demolished to make way for modern treatment facilities.

The infamous "999 Queen Street" address changes to 1001 in an effort to symbolically disconnect the new centre from its stigmatized past.

Opening of the Vivian Rakoff Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Centre, Canada’s first PET centre dedicated to medical imaging research into mental illness.