Two Jails for Julie

Life for me in the mid-1950s was the seemingly usual family life of any postwar child. I lived in a small community, my dad worked, and my mother was a full-time mom. I had a sister and a brother, with another sibling on the way. We lived in a small white bungalow with a green grassy backyard; a shed and a clothesline completed the backyard picture, along with a lawn chair or two. We had our games, our bikes, our friends, and our school, and there was no limit to the antics we would participate in at any given time. It was innocent fun, an innocent time in our lives.

However, our lifestyle, inside our home, was quite different from our friends' way of life. The small bungalow was also an RCMP detachment. Only half of the house was our living area, while the other half was designated "the Mountie's Office" as the sign out front indicated. One room, on "the Mountie's" end of the house, held a huge steel jail cell, and just outside the ugly cell was a small bathroom for the use of the prisoner. The office, cell, and extra bedroom for visiting policemen, a small closet, or exhibit locker, was that whole half of the house. We lived in this home on Newfoundland's southeast coast in a place called Burgeo. The policeman who ran that office for three years in the 1950s was my father.

We were all accustomed to odd happenings. The RCMP boats arriving and leaving, inspectors coming and going, the younger policemen staying for a short time, float planes, helicopters, and boats belonging to the Force were just another part of our lives. It was just the way it was.

Many times there would be a prisoner in the cell for a short time, and they would be noisy, yelling, and banging the bars, but my father could usually tame them using his own calm no-nonsense way. When the prisoners left by boat or plane, and silence came, we would be relieved, and would then claim use of the jail cell to perform skits and play games in as though it was our playroom.

However, one incident was a lengthy one and stands out in my mind as clearly now as when it was happening. Along the south coast, people who had psychiatric problems and were harmful to themselves or others obviously had to be taken out of their community to a psychiatric hospital for help. But what could be done with them in a tiny community before transport to a psychiatric hospital could occur? The "Mountie" or the "Mountie Boat" would pick up the individual, and transport him/her to the nearest jail cell. No cottage hospital or nursing station was equipped to handle violent people who were so ill, so they would be held in a jail cell until they could be dispatched to a medical facility. This was usually done by the police in record time, weather permitting.

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The one incident that I remember well was the case of Julie. I have no idea where she came from, but one day after school we were frightened out of our wits by the screams and the yells coming from the jail end of the house. It was the worst we had ever heard. My little brother started to cry, and mother explained to us that there was a very sick woman in the jail cell. Usually the people around would use the term "mental patient," but we were not permitted to use that term or talk of Julie outside the walls of our home. In that way we learned confidentiality as a policeman's children. It was drilled into us that these people were sick and needed care as any sick person would.

In that way my parents were light years ahead of their time.

Julie was placed in a jail cell for her own safety and the protection of others. She was very badly in need of help. She banged, bashed, cut, and bruised herself, and father would patiently open the cell, call my mother, and the both of them would care for Julie. My mother would take her to the bathroom, bathe her, put clean linen on the cot, encourage her to eat, and would dress her in her own clothes. She was kept warm, clean, and fed, and was cared for by a busy Mountie and his young pregnant wife, who was caring for three children. It was just accepted that they would do this, and they both did it for a lengthy period of time because the weather was "down" and there was nowhere else to take Julie. The doctor came to visit, and she fought him, however she would take medication for my mother, who would hold her and rock her like a baby. It is a scene that has stayed with me all my life.

Finally, the weather cleared and the RCMP floatplane arrived to take Julie to a hospital in a larger town where she could be cared for, treated, and hopefully get well. In later years, my mother was often heard to say, "That poor, poor woman. So sick, so trapped, and having to be in a cold jail cell, away from all she knew!"

I truly believe that mother became the role model who motivated us to become the nurses that we are.

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