Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery patients who died of mental health disorders

On My Fall Walk: Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery – Forgotten, Remembered

On a crisp fall day, I walked the quiet grounds of the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery in Mimico, in the west end of Toronto. Hidden behind a gate and nestled near the roar of the QEW, lies a largely forgotten final resting place for 1,511 individuals who died at what was once known as the Mimico Asylum, later the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital.

This cemetery came into use shortly after the hospital opened in 1890. It served those who died within the institution and had no family, or whose families could not afford to bury them elsewhere. Most of the graves are unmarked, arranged in silent, symmetrical rows — nameless reminders of a time when mental illness often meant lifelong institutionalization and social invisibility.

For many years, the cemetery was neglected — overgrown with weeds, littered with debris and garbage thrown over its fences. It faded from public memory. But in recent years, thanks to the efforts of caring citizens, local historians, and descendants of the deceased, the site has been restored and re-recognized as sacred ground. The effort has helped preserve the memory of those who, in life, were largely unseen and unheard — those who, as one volunteer put it, “lived between those walls.”

Perhaps the most haunting reminder of this history came from a 2012 National Post article that told the story of one such patient, Grace Jeffrey.

“Dear Mother,” begins the letter, dated November 1894, “I would like to come home on Monday, Mother. Will you come for me Monday morning and leave the washing and I will help you when I come… The doctors said that as soon as you come, I can go home.”

Grace was 19 years old when she wrote that hopeful letter. For reasons unknown, it was never mailed. She would never return home. Instead, Grace would live nearly her entire adult life in psychiatric institutions, moving between asylums over six decades. She died in 1953, just shy of her 80th birthday, from pneumonia — alone, having outlived nearly all of her family.