Salt Green Death

The documented experiences of Joseph O’Dwyer, a young man who was institutionalized at one of Canada’s most notorious historic psychiatric institutions.

On November 21, 1948, Joseph O’Dwyer’s suicide attempt was interrupted when a bystander pulled him out of the Kitsilano Pool in Vancouver. This set a series of events in motion that ends with O’Dwyer’s institutionalization at British Columbia’s first forensic psychiatric facility, Colquitz Hospital.

Still reeling from the untimely wartime deaths of O’Dwyer’s siblings, O’Dwyer’s parents reach out to the institution repeatedly, requesting permission to bring him home. When they finally succeed in their request, the visit takes an unexpected turn. O’Dwyer is sent away once again, to an institution that used procedures that were considered unconscionable even then.

But what circumstances brought O’Dwyer to the Kitsilano Pool in the first place? In Salt Green Death, researcher and artist Katarina Thorsen delves into 15 years of Joseph O’Dwyer’s life via patient files and other historical documents. This is her attempt at piecing together meaning and context in the experiences of the O’Dwyer family—a small slice of historical graphic medicine brought to life in coloured pencil and graphite.