ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the fate of transinstitutionalisation, whereby former asylum sites and buildings are re-purposed as new institutional uses that meet contemporary societal needs and priorities. A burgeoning literature in social and cultural geography addresses the question of how collective memory and remembrance are produced by, and reflected in, the built environment. Drawing on the Australian and United States examples as well as the two primary case studies, the chapter focuses on the general opportunities and constraints associated with the educational re-use of psychiatric asylums. In contrast to the absence of specific memorialisation within what is now the Humber College quadrangle, the nearby Assembly Hall offers a formal memorialisation of the past use of the site. Paradoxically, and perhaps pertinently for our analysis, the hall is owned not by the College, but rather by the City of Toronto. The previous use of this building and its construction by patients in 1897 is openly declared in the Assembly Hall itself.
