17.

DAISY’S ROOM IN THE WOMEN’S WARD contained six beds, for five other women and herself. Even though this was a mental hospital, the women didn’t seem mental. One of the younger women, Sam, younger than herself, only sixteen, was from Rosedale — “in” she said, for bad behaviour and giving the old biddies trouble. “Biddies,” of course, meant her mother and aunt. She laughed defiantly at Daisy. She had long, uncombed hair down her back (Nurse Chalmers would soon have made short shrift of that) and wore strange wooden beads round her neck. Sam, short for Samantha, was in for something called “Behaviour Therapy.”

“Where are you from?”

She didn’t want to say “Orillia,” as it wasn’t anything to be proud of, she knew. “I’m from … a hospital.”

Daisy was conscious of her too long, drab, institutional dress with its silly Peter Pan collar that Mrs. Demsey had had them cut out in Sewing Class, and her flat ugly shoes and bobby socks. Sam wore a short denim skirt above her knees, combined with a long loose top that hung down to her knees — and no brassiere. She was a “beatnik,” she said, tossing back her long hair. This must be the fashion in Toronto, Daisy decided. If Sam could help her find some scissors, she could cut a chunk off the hem of her own skirt.

“I’m afraid scissors aren’t allowed on the ward,” said Nurse Wilkins.

“We’ve got to jam with Pebbles and Mel in the morning,” yawned Sam. “Pebbles” was Dr. Charles Peebles and “Mel” was Dr. Philip Melville, Daisy realized with shock. Sam had used nicknames as if they were the best of friends.

“A conference, Daisy. We have one every morning for our clients in the sitting room to talk out issues bothering you,” explained Nurse Wilkins kindly, as if Daisy understood. “You can express yourself freely here, Daisy.” Daisy tried to understand that she was now a “client.”

“Let it all out, man,” said Sam polishing her nails.

The room was so wonderful. In awe, Daisy touched the bed with its fresh clean linen and pale pink counterpane — all four women had identical linen, so as not to show favouritism she decided. She had a real fluffy pillow. There was a small bedside table with a drawer and a little shelf below, just for her, for her “personal things,” said the nurse mysteriously. Daisy was not sure Miss Wilkins was a “real” nurse since she did not wear a white uniform, no uniform at all that Daisy could see — no nurse’s cap and band — and certainly not white rubber shoes. Instead, she wore a pretty short dress and casual sandals, but she did have a stethoscope around her neck.

There was an added luxury of a bedside lamp, marvelled Daisy, and a chest of drawers she shared with Sam. A long window overlooked trees and tall buildings; far below, was College Street. She glimpsed cars and a red streetcar and people walking about freely. That night the tall buildings shone with lights — it was so bright after the darkness of Orillia.

Most of all, Daisy marvelled at the bathroom with its door. “A door?” she murmured, touching it with pleasure. In this place, you got to pee and change your pad in private.

“Yes, Daisy, a door,” smiled Nurse Wilkins brightly. She knew Daisy was mentally retarded; poor thing, not knowing what a door was. “Door,” she emphasized clearly, in a kind way.

And only one toilet and shower at a time.

“An’ curtains round the shower stall,” Daisy touched the plastic curtains that hung from the shower rod. Such curtains she had never seen before; they were beautiful, shining, and clean, and had a pattern of flowers and birds scattered wonderfully about. She smoothed the curtains with her fingertips and felt a pleasure close to adoration. To undress naked and shower alone! She could hardly wait her turn.

“Yes … those are called shower curtains, Daisy. You pull them around the stall before turning on this tap. Dr. Melville moved heaven and earth to get them — and toilet seats — on the ward.”

Daisy still was not sure about Nurse Wilkins, who was to be called “Janet.”

She felt confused. She had already mistaken the cleaning lady for a nurse, thinking her white stockings and rubber shoes were a uniform. Some young man with longish curls who wore jeans turned out to be a doctor.

Yet she could not sleep at night in the beautiful room, even though the beds on either side were far away. She missed the beds pressing in around her in Cottage M, the girls’ heavy breathing, their presence. There was no nursing attendant at a Nursing Station keeping watch. How would she know when to get up? There were no bells here, no nurse aide shouting down the aisle, “Git moving.” The front doors downstairs in the foyer were locked at night, but by day they were open; the door in the women’s ward was also left open and it led out to the corridor, so you could walk out into the street if you wanted. Daisy tossed and lay still again, listening intently to the sounds of her childhood in Toronto long forgotten, to the trams and cars and a long, high whine that must be a siren: Fire! Police! Ambulance!

Sam was painting her toenails a wild purple shade as she sat on the bed after breakfast, still in her pyjamas. She was on Largactil, she said, to settle her down. The other women were watching TV attached high up on the wall, The Breakfast Show; another, a hysteric, was reading True Crime. The older woman, Mrs. Drew, was having Shock that morning, and had to miss breakfast. Mrs. Drew had frizzy grey hair and pale, fluttery eyes. No one paid her any attention. “Fries your brains,” she said to nobody and everyone. She kept repeating it over and over, and pressing her head her hands trembled. “Z-z-z-z-t, and you’re done.”

“Done for, you mean,” muttered Sam.

Medications had been brought in before breakfast on a nice tray carried by a nurse aide, though she wore no blue uniform or banded cap that Daisy could see. “Meds!” she smiled brightly. The women shambled over. Daisy obediently swallowed hers though she was certain her mother would raise a stink.

“My ma will soon fix the doctors ’bout these pills,” she confided to Sam.

“What meds you taking?”

“Dunno. Pills my ma said not t’ swaller but stick ’em up my cheeks.”

Sam let out a laugh. “Boy, Daisy, you’re something, eh?”

This seemed to mean Sam liked her. Daisy smiled.

The men were upstairs on the second floor, but they were free to come down and have meals with the women, or watch TV, or play cards, or just smoke. Nobody stopped them. They did not roll their own smokes from tobacco tins, but everyone had real packets of Players bought from outside. And somewhere on the third floor, no one knew exactly where, Mrs. Drew. was going to get Shock. She started to cry and resist.

“Now, now, it’ll be over before you know it, Phyllis,” said Nurse Willoughby.

“That’s the problem,” muttered Sam, in a tone Daisy understood was smart. Daisy could tell that Shock was not something Sam approved of.

“Electric shock, ECT,” clarified Sam, when Mrs. Drew had been led away after being told to swallow a drink in a little white paper cup. She was agitated, begging for another chance.

“Z-z-z-z-z-t.”

The women moved to the little sitting room off the bedroom now, excited, for cheery Dr. Peebles had arrived, wearing a flowered shirt today. He would be followed by Dr. Melville later, Sam’s personal therapist.

“Wild, man!” screamed Sam. She sat cross-legged on the rug. Daisy stayed back near the corner, shyly. This was “rap” time. The women talked strange to Dr. Peebles whom they called, unbelievably, “Pebbles.” They talked about their orgasms or lack of them, or when they felt they were “on the edge.”

“I want it all the time, Pebbles!” moaned one woman. She also had long straight hair that fell recklessly about her face (combing one’s hair was obviously optional here).

“Oh, I do too,” said Daisy eagerly, wanting to be part of the group. Everyone turned around and laughed.

“Oh, Daisy!” Sam giggled.

What had she said? Once again, Daisy was painfully aware of her Orillia dress right out of the 1950s. She did not speak again, even when Dr. Peebles looked at her directly and asked, “What is your opinion, Miss Lumsden?” All she could do was shake her head.

Later that morning, while Sam was having a “rap” with “Mel” — Dr. Melville — she ventured out through an unlocked side door. She walked along Grosvenor Street past a hospital called Women’s College, and turned down to College Street, a busy road with trams and throngs of people walking to work in the bright city sunshine. A street vendor was selling hotdogs at a stand on the corner. She reached University Avenue. More huge, heavy, stone buildings that looked like Orillia’s Administration Building came into view. It was Queen’s Park, the towering legislative buildings you would not dare go into. A flag hung on a pole; it was the old Ontario Red Ensign. She walked further, toward the lights.

There was a distant roar, thousands of voices were singing. “Groovy,” said someone at the lights and a group of teenagers dressed like Sam surged forward on the green light. The girls all wore short skirts Daisy now knew were called miniskirts or minis. The boys had long hair and wore jeans and T-shirts and rows of beads or long medallions just like the girls. In fact, Daisy found it hard to tell the boys apart from the girls. She moved with them until they stopped and melted in with the crowd at the park, where boys and girls sat together on the grass, smoking strong, sweet-smelling cigarettes that looked like sticks you might pick up off the ground. Three young men with hair down their shoulders were playing electric guitars at a microphone, wound round with wires and outlets attached to a small van: “Love, love me do / You know I love you / I’ll always be true…” One girl had one of her breasts pushed out of her open blouse, as she sat on the grass, feeding her baby in front of everybody. But no one seemed to notice thought Daisy, bewildered. A girl who had a baby in Orillia would never sit out on the front lawn suckling it. The babies were taken and buried behind the farm, Daisy knew, or put straight into the Children’s Dorm; Nurse Chalmers would see to that.

“Disgusting,” said a woman crossing the park. “Something should be done about these hippies.”

Daisy repeated the new, important word to herself. Sam was a “hippie” as well as a “beatnik.” She could hear bits of conversation all around her: “…should cut their hair off … all these kids taking over … should call in the army to take care of them…,” but she wasn’t sure what it all meant.

There was a statue of a man looking thoughtfully down the avenue. “MacDonald,” she read, excited that she could make out the important word. But the avenue was long and endless, and she had no money — nowhere to go — no means of getting food or a room for the night. Where was Sumach Street and Granpa Hewitt and Ganny? She did not know; she did not know that Regent Park had been built. Frightened, she turned around and made for the lights. On the other side of the intersection, peering between more grey-white buildings she thought she recognized the dull gold brick of the hospital. She hurried along College Street and back around the corner to Surrey Place, alarmed but excited. She had been to a “Love-In”; she had heard a girl scream ecstatically. This girl also had her tits bobbing through a see-through top. Brassieres were out in Toronto, Daisy decided, so why was she wearing one?

The first thing that Dr. Miles noticed in the interview was that Daisy Lumsden did not seem to have any idea why she had been sent to the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital. Of course, it was doubtful that Dr. Crawford-Jones in Orillia would have discussed with Daisy the parents’ threat of habeas corpus, and their claim that she was being held against her will illegally in the institution. Daisy was too limited intellectually to understand. The records forwarded from Orillia showed her to be a half-moron or moron, though her last I.Q. recently assessed as 42 by Dr. Assaf at Orillia put her in the “imbecile” range, a fact shared with the young student, Miss Woodcock, who sat taking notes to the side.

Daisy was also strangely convinced that she was in the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, a notion she had gotten from her mother.

“I apologize for the confusion and mess everywhere in the hallways and offices, Daisy,” Dr. Miles smiled, indicating the women’s sitting room (and not an office, noted Daisy). The room was filled with boxes of files and office equipment awaiting transfer. “We’re in the process of moving this month to our new building on College Street, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.”

He glanced at Daisy, who that morning was wearing a dress that looked as if it had been hacked at the bottom by a saw. It hung above her knees in jagged edges, and something had happened to the collar around the neck, as if it had been ripped out of its stitches. He wisely made no comment.

“My mother took the pills to th’ doctors here at th’ Clarke an’ made a big fuss about the bad things they done to me up in Orillia is why I’m here,” challenged Daisy, her voice shifting to a heavy, grating tone like her mother’s.

“You’d like to be off the Mellaril, Daisy?”

This was in keeping with the new approach at TPH of discussing a patient’s meds with her, within reason, of course.

“Mell’ril? Was that the pills what I been swallerin’?” she asked. “I didn’ know what pills it was. They never told me.”

Dr. Miles was aware of the necessity of being loyal to his colleagues in the psychiatry department in Orillia and to exemplify this to the young intern, Miss Woodcock, busily taking notes in the corner. According to the Examination on Admission form, Daisy was assigned 100 mg. of Mellaril for “homosexuality.”

“We agree you don’t need them any more, Daisy.”

“Tha’s what my mother said. She said Orillia give us too much drugs. She said not t’ swaller ’em but spit ’em out when nobody was looking.” Daisy had a vague sense of her mother’s triumph, of something being exonerated, though she was not sure exactly what. Suddenly, she began to sob.

The sensitive issue of Daisy’s relationship with her mother had to be raised, of course. The habeas corpus the mother had brought against Dr. Houze and the institution placed Daisy under “forensic” investigation. Dr. Miles thought it best broach the subject of her mother by bringing up the words “going home.” Would Daisy like to go home after her release?

“Home?” Daisy asked through her tears. She had a memory of a room, her mother’s china crashing down, a man…

“When you leave this hospital, Daisy.”

“Oh, but I likes it here,” Daisy put in quickly.

“Yes, but Daisy, you cannot stay here forever. This is a psychiatric research hospital not an institution.”

Then it came out: her fear of her mother forcing sex on her. “She might make me ’ave the sex again…” This was the crux.

Dr. Miles glanced at Miss Woodcock, who wrote: “The patient expressed rather strong ambivalent feelings about returning to her mother.”

In the Clinical Record, Dr. Miles was later careful to omit the actual word “rape” in Daisy’s account of that Christmas 1963, noting that she insisted her mother had “paid a man to sexually molest her.” He added, even more carefully from a legal point of view: “She claims she has been worried about this since that time and at the present.” Of course, there was always the possibility that Daisy’s mother had enjoyed watching her daughter, this sort often did. Dr. Miles shuddered.

“You’d prefer to return to the Orillia hospital, Daisy?”

Daisy sobbed even harder, and struggled for the words that could tell this kind man what she felt. “No, they makes you work hard all day with th’ big-headed babies on th’ wards an’ doin’ laundry, hundreds of sheets an’ sewing all them dome fast’ners for the baby bibs. I get pushed round by the other girls an’ get the blame.”

Miss Woodcock translated this as: “She expressed dislike of the Orillia hospital — she had to work for long periods of time at different jobs, that other patients pushed and shoved her around but she did not know where she would like to go definitely.”

“Maybe she be diff’rent now,” said Daisy slowly, shifting back to her mother, between tears. But it wasn’t just her fear of “sex” as it was something else. She tried to express her horror of her mother’s “fits” and all it meant from so long ago, being a little girl and being really frightened, a past now so suddenly real, a past she thought she had forgotten. “She might ’ave fits…” Yet the idea of “home” she so longed for persisted. The idea of a loving mother, looking after her, persisted, too.

Dr. Miles made every effort to understand this.

She felt she would like to go home because maybe she — the mother — would be different now. Miss Woodcock dutifully recorded: “Daisy, however, expressed fear that her mother might have fits.”

Dr. Miles glanced — a significant exchange — at intern Miss Woodcock. This was important. Mrs. Lumsden was an unfit mother. Daisy’s admission that she feared a repeat of sexual assault by her mother meant that the habeas corpus could possibly be annulled.

Mrs. Lumsden was the key to the outcome here. She sat with her husband in the Visitors’ Room, looking around in awe at the chintz curtains and matching chair covers, the coffee table — “Tha’s a nice bit o’ wood” — and at the doctors sitting casually in easy chairs. In particular, she liked Dr. Peebles’s shirt, she said, and that she and Ernie were sitting in a lovely sitting room. She smiled eagerly at Dr. Miles. For the first time in her life, perhaps, Ella Lumsden was being listened to, her opinions and wants deferred to. Indeed, she was being given credence and certain respect. And it was significant how much she had to say.

Dr. Miles recorded in his Progress Notes:

May 5, 1966.

Today I interviewed the patient’s parents.

The conversation, to begin with, was concerning Daisy’s present situation with regard to the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital and the Orillia Hospital. Mrs. Lumsden expressed apparent dislike for the Orillia Hospital and her concern that the patient not be returned there. (What Mrs. Lumsden had actually said was that Orillia was a “drug house” and the patients made to work in “chain-gangs.”) She stressed that the patient is “not stupid,” is able to do housework, to sew, to clean floors, and to cook, and therefore should be allowed to go home (or at least to have her own room). When questioned about Mrs. Lumsden’s health recently and in the past, it was pointed out that she had fits, the last one about a year ago and has been on capsules, one three times a day and a little pill. Mrs. Lumsden appeared to be able to give me the adequate dosages with the number of capsules taken.

The seizures were also important as they affected Mrs. Lumsden’s capabilities as a mother to take care of and protect Daisy, and, therefore, the outcome of the habeas corpus. Though it did appear that a doctor at the Mental Health Centre at 999 Queen Street had considered Mrs. Lumsden’s “fits” to be genuine seizures and had put her on medication, one had to take into account the opinions of doctors and psychiatrists throughout her records who had invariably regarded Ella Hewitt’s fits as “functional”: “she appears to have ‘seizures.’”

Dr. Miles had taken a quick look at the records from the Children’s Aid Society, which showed a letter to Miss Prewse, social worker, in April, 1951, from the Assistant Superintendent Dr. H. F. Frank at Orillia stating: “Concerning Ella Hewitt, no seizures reported during her stay at the Orillia hospital.”

“’S long as I takes the capsules an’ drinks no beer, I’m good, Doc’r Mile.” Mrs. Lumsden flashed a huge, disconcerting smile at the doctors, her lips smeared with bright red lipstick, her cheeks rouged. She was dressed quite appropriately, though, Dr. Miles noted, in a neat costume with fake pearls.

Dr. Miles turned his attention to Ernest Lumsden who seemed a well-groomed, well-developed individual with a tendency to stutter. “I-I’m off w-work at Smith Transport cause a th’ th’ truckers’ strike,” he began hesitantly. “But I got a sec’nd job, sir, wiv Gen’ral Steel Ware.” He assured Dr. Miles he would be returning to work shortly.

“I can get Daisy a job at the Ontar’o Laundry jus’ like that,” cut in Mrs. Lumsden, snapping her fingers in Dr. Peachy’s face.

“N-now, now, Ella,” Mr. Lumsden put a gentle hand on his wife’s arm. Mrs. Lumsden pushed this aside, insisting she could also get Daisy a job where her daughter Lizzie was working. “Aw, n-na, Ella,” went Mr. Lumsden again.

“Fuck, can so!” cried Mrs. Lumsden exasperated. Mr. Lumsden at once fell silent.

Dr. Miles noted further that both the Lumsdens did not wish that the patient be returned to Orillia, which Mrs. Lumsden once again called a “jail ’ouse.”

“What is your opinion of the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital?”

“It a fine, fine place,” Mrs. Lumsden bent forward eagerly.

Mr. Lumsden nodded agreeably and said, “This the b-bestest. Daisy c’n live here, she be happy.”

“But why Daisy not live at ’ome?” persisted Mrs. Lumsden. “We got a room for ’er ready.”

One wondered what sort of home was in Mrs. Lumsden’s head that she felt she had to offer Daisy in the circumstances, whether she fully comprehended the effects of the sexual abuse of the past on Daisy — not yet alluded to — and that Daisy had not lived with her parents since early childhood. She seemed to have spent most of her life in shelters and institutions.

Mrs. Lumsden again persisted, in that harsh grating voice of hers, that she could get Daisy work. She was getting somewhat agitated — her face was flushed, her teeth were clicking. Why couldn’t Daisy live at “Lor’mer Lodge, with ’er younger sister Lizzie?” She grasped the sleeve of Dr. Peebles’s shirt. A doctor who wore pink had to be kind.

Dr. Peebles shifted his arm (this was a woman who had threatened to blow up one of the Cottages in Orillia, according to the files).

“Lizzie is there in Lor’mer Lodge doin’ good, Doct’r Pebbles, cleanin’ an’ such.”

While Daisy had been in Orillia, Mrs. Lumsden and her husband had obviously made the effort to keep in touch with Lizzie. They were aware of her living arrangements, as well as her place of work, despite Lizzie’s protestations to staff at the Lorimer Lodge and to Dr. Peebles earlier that she “didn’t want nothing to do with her. She ain’t my mother, I don’t feel nothing for her.”

Dr. Miles needed to make explicit order out of all this. He wrote in his Progress Notes:

Both parents would not wish that the patient return to the Orillia Hospital. When asked about staying at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, both felt that this was a fine place, that she would be happy here and they would agree to this. However, Mrs. Lumsden is more adamant in that the patient come to live with her and she could not see why the patient should live in Toronto without living at home. Mr. Lumsden appeared to be more flexible in this respect.

Lizzie was being interviewed separately. She would provide another interesting dimension to the family relationships with the mother, thought Dr. Miles. She was a pretty, blond, bespeckled young lady of seventeen. He wrote in his Progress Notes that Lizzie was “friendly and cooperative.”

“I didn’t even knowed I had a sister,” said Lizzie, blinking rapidly at Dr. Miles. She had an obvious horizontal nystagmus that was coarse, he noted.

Daisy did not wonder or question how Dr. Miles, as a psychiatrist, had been able to locate Lizzie so quickly at Lorimer Lodge.

Daisy, of course, was unaware of the existence of the confidential Toronto Social Services Index, a professional network that until the 1960s had relayed confidential information about patients back and forth between various agencies including the Children’s Aid Society and the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital without the patients’ knowledge or consent. In actuality, unknown to Daisy or the Lumsdens, this was a sensitive ethical issue that had been challenged by young, outspoken Morton Teicher, chief social worker at TPH in the 1950s.

Teicher, horrified by the abuse of patient privacy and confidentiality, wrote an article recommending its abolishment, in 1952: “Let’s Abolish the Social Service Exchange,” published in Social Work Journal in January, 1952, which had resulted in the Exchange being dissolved a decade later. However, links between agencies still continued as evidenced by the two Children’s Aid Societies, Catholic and non-Catholic, exchanging information about the Lumsdens and the Hewitts.

Lorimer Lodge, formerly The Haven run by the Salvation Army Mission Service, now included mentally retarded women as part of its clientele, or young women considered in trouble with the law or out-of-control in the community. Many of the women were homeless. Lizzie had been transferred once her wardship was up with the CAS of Toronto at age sixteen; they had made these arrangements as Lizzie had wanted to live in the city: “It was dull up in Richmond Hill.” There were movies and dances, taverns and “clubs” in downtown Toronto. Indeed, Lizzie enjoyed the nightlife Toronto offered; the Matron at Lorimer had reported her out after hours at a tavern on Parliament Street. Now Dr. Miles had inadvertently enabled the two sisters to reunite after a decade, something that Lizzie had not necessarily favoured at first. The long-lost sister she had allowed herself to forget up in Orillia: “What wa the use of thinkin’ about ’er?” she said to Dr. Miles.

Daisy had stared at Lizzie at their meeting in the Visitor’s Room. Here was Lizzie alive in Toronto all this time, carrying on with her life while she had been locked up in Orillia.

“’T’warn’t fair,” Daisy had cried.

Lizzie was cautious. She suddenly had a sister, which might mean having to pick up with her mother and father again. She had no idea why Daisy had been brought down to the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Miles noted, (no idea what a habeas corpus was) but thought it good for Daisy to return home rather than go to Orillia. She had a pert face with a tight expression, unlike her sister Daisy. She kept her slim legs with their pretty ankles crossed, her feet tight in thin-strapped high-heels.

“Would you like to go home, Miss Lumsden?” he asked slyly.

At once Lizzie stiffened. “Only for weekends”

Dr. Miles wrote in the Progress Notes:

When asked whether she herself would go home, she said only for weekends because “They are not like my parents, only foster parents.” She thought it would be a good idea for the patient to go to Lorimer Lodge or to live in a home situation as she is living in now (as a domestic in a nursing home).

Progress notes re: Daisy Lumsden:

May 12, 1966

The patient Daisy appears quite depressed. She is also quite suspicious. During interview today she became quite tearful claiming that this hospital was only going to send her back to the Orillia Hospital. She fears this greatly. Actually the patient shows amazing insight into her own limitations and she would appear to see that this is possibly the best alternative that she has. With regard to her future, she firstly would favour going to live with her sister, Lizzie. When it was pointed out to her that this might not be possible, she began to appear more depressed. She seems not to show enthusiasm about going home with her mother; neither does she push for this. Generally, she shows impatience and anger that the question of her sexual relations of about three years ago continually is brought up. She feels that this would not happen again due to her mother’s promise.

One wondered what this “promise” was, most likely concerning sexual abuse by any one of Ella Lumsden’s boyfriends, but Daisy could not or would not say the words to Dr. Miles, only insisting: “She promise me, it not never happen again.”

Such was the sensitivity of young Miss Ramage, the social worker, that it was Mrs. Lumsden herself who introduced the subject of her alleged sexual abuse of Daisy. She denied forcing her daughter to have sexual intercourse with a boyfriend.

Miss Ramage wrote: “She denies this and states the doctors up in Orillia are out to blacken her character.”

Dr. Miles and Dr. Peebles had consulted the newly formed “Social Department” at TPH for a second opinion on Mrs. Lumsden, in keeping with the eclectic approach the hospital prided itself on. The Social Department was one of the few in Ontario, and was ahead of its time. It developed new skills in interviewing patients and their relatives. Miss Rita Lindenfield, Director, and at present on leave, was replaced by Cyril Greenland, former Head of Social Work at Whitby Asylum, who was of the opinion that patients should be “invited” to participate in interviews, as part of the new openness at TPH.

Certainly young Miss Ramage seemed to have Mrs. Lumsden’s confidence. “Don’t b’lieve them doctors up in Orillia. I ain’t done no wrong.”

But Mrs. Lumsden also claimed she had never been separated from her husband, which Miss Ramage knew not to be true. Mrs. Lumsden insisted that Daisy had told her she wanted to come home to live with her, which was not what Daisy had confided earlier to Miss Ramage. But then, Daisy had changed her mind. On May 9, 1966, she had suddenly said: “I just wish I could go home and then I would be happy.” Obviously, another fantasy of “home” on Daisy’s part, frowned Dr. Miles, a fantasy that Mrs. Lumsden did not have the wherewithal to provide, and that inexperienced Miss Ramage was too innocent to detect as yet.

Mrs. Lumsden reached out for Miss Ramage’s hand with her own gnarled nail-bitten one coated with bright pink polish. “I can get Daisy a job at th’ Ontar’o Laundry,” she insisted.

One had to be cautious about this, Dr. Miles wanted to intervene with trusting Miss Ramage. Part of the trouble with social workers was that they tended to overly identify with patients; Miss Ramage was seeing the Lumsdens as people with common marital problems just like anyone else. But Miss Ramage saw Mr. Lumsden’s faithfulness in this marriage and the faithlessness of Ella as only too familiar a scenario from the marriage counselling and advice columns of the circulars put out by Social Department.

Mr. Lumsden later confided in private to Miss Ramage that “some of the things his wife said ’bout Ontar’o L-Laundry wasn’ true,” and that they had separated many times. He had also told her that she spent nights out with other men, which had resulted in a hysterectomy, but that he was too afraid of upsetting her by pointing out the truth in front of her. Besides, all that was in the past.

Miss Ramage saw that Mr. Lumsden was the more stable one, and when Mrs. Lumsden became “overly excited and unrealistic,” she wrote later, Mr. Lumsden “brought her back to reality.”

In fact, Mr. Lumsden now confided that he had faced many problems as a result of being retarded. “It ain’t a good thing bein’ retard, Miss Ramage,” which Miss Ramage felt showed great strength of character considering his intelligence.

“I kn-knows what it is t’ be look down on and be retarded,” he mumbled softly, “and I w-want to spare my chil’ren this, make sures they be train pr-proper vocashnally.” Perhaps he had not been so opposed to Daisy being at Orillia, Miss Ramage surmised, and that he only wanted Daisy discharged to please and pacify his wife. Mrs. Lumsden was certainly desperate to get Daisy out.

Here Miss Ramage hesitated. Like all well-trained social workers, she admitted tentatively in her notes that, “There are many things I do not know about Daisy’s relationship with her mother,” further emphasizing that she had not seen them together. In addition, Mrs. Lumsden had confided to being “lonely.” Miss Ramage had noted: “She was often lonely at night in her apartment while her husband was at work.”

Mrs. Lumsden had looked anxious then. She was eager to make a good impression, Miss Ramage felt, but was not sure how to do this. In her report to Dr. Miles, she indicated that Mrs. Lumsden seemed to have little idea how much she was making a nuisance of herself by phoning reception and the women’s ward constantly. She had promised to give Miss Ramage and the two doctors a “warm reception” when they visited her home and that she would serve them coffee and cake. (Dr. Miles was not certain about the cake aspect.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Peebles had looked into Lorimer Lodge, and the staff there reported that Lizzie had made “satisfactory progress,” and that Mr. and Mrs. Lumsden rarely visited or interfered with her progress. Of course, Dr. Peebles did not know as yet that Lizzie had told her parents to fuck off and stay out of her life. Miss Ramage herself noted that Daisy had been well-behaved at TPH, but sad: “I feel she is often left out of conversation and activities because she is retarded.” She wondered whether all the good training in the world at the Ontario Hospital School in Orillia could redeem the loss of family Daisy seemed to feel. Miss Ramage intimated as much to Dr. Miles.

The love Miss Ramage felt Daisy yearned for could not be fulfilled in Mrs. Lumsden. This was a complex tragedy that moved in circles, unspoken. But that Miss Ramage had inadvertently touched upon the loneliness at the core of Mrs. Lumsden’s life in her empty apartment, all due to the loss of her children.

And so Daisy was to be returned to Orillia “until her time was up” in the institution in December of 1966, when she could finally leave, slated for probation in a place like Lorimer Lodge.

“I was betrayed. They sent me back. I never got to choose what I wanted which was to stay in T’ronto, nobody listen.” But Dr. Miles had promised she would be released from Orillia into a halfway house, a transitional residence, in the new year, in January 1967, to prepare her for complete independence. It meant only a short stay back in Orillia once she left TPH, if she could only be patient, he urged.

Of course, there were objections from Dr. Crawford-Jones in Orillia. He phoned Dr. Miles reminding him of the Lumsdens’ constant interference with Daisy’s Training Program, and their harassment — the verbal threats, the abuse, the lurid phone calls — to the point of threatening to blow up the place. Daisy had, consequently, become belligerent, antagonistic, and difficult to handle.

On no account would they allow Daisy Lumsden to transfer to Toronto, not to Lorimer Lodge, certainly not to her parents’ place. Whitby, yes. Possibly Cobourg.