Historic Sites of Manitoba: Home for Incurables / Home for the Aged and Infirm / Manitoba School for Mental Defectives / Manitoba School for Retardates / Manitoba Development Centre (3rd Street NE, Portage la Prairie)

Link to:
Medical Superintendents | Photos & Coordinates | Sources

Designed and built between 1889 and 1890 on a design by Winnipeg architect Charles H. Wheeler, the facility in Portage la Prairie housed patients with with a wide variety of ailments that at the time would not be treated in a general hospital. A report in 1918 by two Ontario physicians reported:

“The name, Home for Incurables, is misleading, and the institution has become a reception house for every kind of ailment—as one of our party expressed it—“from eczema to dementia.” Apparently any family in Manitoba which had a troublesome member, either old or young, simply passed it on to the Home for Incurables, until this institution possessed an unhappy conglomeration of idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, insane, seniles and mentally normal people suffering from incurable diseases.”

Names under which the facility operated through its history have included Home for Incurables (1890-1924), Home for the Aged and Infirm (1924-1930), Manitoba School for Mental Defectives (1930-1967), Manitoba School for Retardates (1967-1984), and Manitoba Development Centre (1984-present).

Medical Superintendents

Period	Medical Superintendent
1890-?	Thomas Mcketchie Milroy (1859-1947)
?-?	John Pringle Young (1845-1918)
1901-1906	William Patterson Smith (1850-1937)
1906-1930	?
1930-1965	Henry Sheridan Atkinson (1901-1965)
1965-?	Glen Harrison Lowther (1926-2019)
?-1982	?
1982-1984	Murray McLandress (1918-1996)
1984-1987	Fischel J. Coodin (c1926-1992)

Photos & Coordinates

Postcard view of Home for Incurables with original building at right and addition at left (no date) Source: Rob McInnes, PP0020 Postcard view of Home for Incurables (circa 1905) by G. A. Barrowclough Source: Rob McInnes, PP0031 Map of building at Home for Incurables (1920) Source: Archives of Manitoba, Fire Insurance Map One of the original buildings at left and 1937-1938 addition, designed by architect Gilbert C. Parfitt, at right at Manitoba School for Mental Defectives (no date) Source: Archives of Manitoba, Portage la Prairie-Building-Provincial-Manitoba School for Mental Defectives 4, N14776 Atkinson Building at Manitoba School for Mental Defectives (no date) Source: Archives of Manitoba, Portage la Prairie-Building-Provincial-Manitoba School for Mental Defectives 14, N34137 Aerial view of buildings at Manitoba School for Mental Defectives (no date) Source: Archives of Manitoba, Portage la Prairie-Building-Provincial-Manitoba School for Mental Defectives 3, N34133 Aerial view of buildings at Manitoba Development Centre (October 2020) Source: George Penner Site Coordinates (lat/long): N49.98586, W98.28390 denoted by symbol on the map above

See also:

Historic Sites of Manitoba: Manitoba Development Centre Cemetery (RM of Portage la Prairie)

Memorable Manitobans: Gilbert C. Parfitt (1886-1966)

“A Very Serious Matter”: The Manitoba Government’s Institution for People with Intellectual Disability by Mary Horodyski
Prairie History, Number 1, Winter 2020

Sources:

“Report of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene,” by Drs. C. K. Clarke and C. M. Hincks, Public Welfare Commission of Manitoba, Second Interim Report, February 1919, page 106. [Manitoba Legislative Library, SpR 1917]

We thank James Kostuchuk, Rob McInnes, Mary Horodyski, Nathan Kramer, and George Penner for providing additional information used here.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 1 February 2023

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