A Historical Review of Psychiatry in the Province of Quebec, Canada

In this paper QUEBEC shall be utilized as a “case method” example of a province which depicts a linear progression in a positive direction in the treatment and care of its mentally ill. Quebec is unique in that it was the first province in Canada to provide succor, care and treatment to the mentally ill. This provision of care for the mentally ill took on a very unique pattern even after services were provided in other provinces in Canada. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church was paramount. Services were “farmed out “to religious orders or proprietary interests which were not followed by the other provinces. Notwithstanding this anomalous situation in comparison with the other provinces its humanitarian thrust for the time was not much different than that of the other provinces. A psychiatric historical review of services to the mentally ill in Quebec from the 15th century to the 20th century will be examined. In the early 1700s, New France encompassed most of the eastern seaboard of Canada. The most important colony was at Québec, established by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. The name Canada was first applied to this colony. The settlements in Acadia, which is now the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were even earlier, dating from the mid sixteenth century. Ile Saint Jean, now called Prince Edward Island, did not have permanent settlements until somewhat later. The French had a chain of trading forts in the Great lakes and down the Mississippi. New Orleans was a French colony until the late eighteenth century. North of New England, the British had only a colony at St. Johns on the eastern tip of Newfoundland and, by mid-century, a settlement at Halifax. As early as 1639, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu of France, the Duchess d'Aiguillon, founded the Hotel Dieu (hospital) of Québec, which cared for the “indigent, crippled and idiots” [1]. Québec can also be credited with being the first jurisdiction in Canada to provide separate accommodations for the insane. In 1714, the second bishop of Quebec, Bishop St. Vallier, built a small structure of twelve beds for mentally ill women [2]. In French Canada, the care of the mentally ill was characterized by a “farming out” or “contracting out” to religious orders. These Roman Catholic religious orders were then reimbursed for their provision of care by the French colonial authorities, and interestingly by the British Crown after 1763. Institutional conditions under both regimes were, in a word, deplorable. These adverse conditions seemed even more so in the North American because they were based on