It is off handed, the way Gaëtane tells me about Chestnut Lodge. I was sent to a psychiatric hospital for ten months when I was eighteen, for being a lesbian, she tells me. Mais je faisais toutes sortes de bêtises. But I was doing all sorts of stupid things. I must look shocked. What kind of bêtises, what kind of antics would merit almost a year in a psychiatric facility?
Ask your mother, she then said, and while my translation often missed nuance, I heard the bitterness there. My mother, who had sung me lullabies that celebrated queerness. She was five years older than Gaëtane, 23 at the time, a teaching student at SFU, an environmental activist as well. I wonder how Gaëtane sees my mother’s culpability, if she sees her as complicit in her exile. At 23, did my mother know what it really meant to be gay? Did they talk about Gaëtane over family dinner, or was it vaguely phrased, some kind of infirmity, or hysteria?
Chestnut Lodge was famous, infamous in some eyes, for its pioneering psychological treatments. A towering brick building with sweeping lawns and chestnut groves, it was a place where people of a certain means could send their family members for discreet treatment. It was, Gaëtane told me, how you would imagine a psychiatric hospital to be at the time. White-coated orderlies walked around the grounds with jangling rings of keys. Access to the wider grounds had to be earned through good behavior. It broke my mind, Gaëtane tells me.
It was Dot’s idea, it seems, in concert with Fiona and Nell. The Free School, one place where Gaëtane felt seen and accepted, lacked stability and leadership, and quickly closed down. At seventeen, Gaëtane moved in with the parents of her friends in Vancouver. One day, while wandering downtown with her friends, was interrogated by the police, and, not having any apparent legal guardian, was arrested.
She was held in a juvenile detention facility. The contrast to a life of freedom, to being barefoot on an island and being the master of her own time, was a shock.
I was horrified because I was used to total freedom. And here I was, inside walls. And above all, every morning, we cleaned everywhere. There wasn’t a speck of dust. The gutters, everything. It horrified me, horrified me. I tell myself, the more inhuman the place is, the cleaner it is.
J’étais horrifiée parce que j’avais l’habitude de la liberté totale. Et voilà, que j’étais dans des murs. Et surtout, tous les matins, on nettoyait partout. Y avait pas un grain de poussière. Des gouttières, tout. Ça m’a horrifiée, horrifiée. Je me dis, plus l’endroit est inhumain, plus il est propre.
The more inhuman a place is, the cleaner it will be.
After being held for a week, it was arranged that she fly back to Montreal. Once again, she was put in an institution, and offered a psychoanalysis at Chestnut Lodge, a three day stay, they told her, and an expert opinion on how her mind worked. Once there, she was told she would likely remain for ten years.
We flew, we arrived at Chestnut Lodge. And I saw this place that was infinitely sad. Very… Yes, very sad. And I said to myself it’s not possible, that this is where they’re taking me.
On a pris l’avion, on est arrivées à Chestnut Lodge. Et j’ai vu cet endroit qui était infiniment triste. Très… Oui, très triste. Et je me suis dit c’est pas possible, que ce soit là qu’on m’emmène.
I escaped and married a man so they couldn’t send me back, she says. The details she shares are muddy - she knew the man she married from her school days in BC. After they married, they stayed with friends, worked odd jobs to get by. She moved back to France, divorced him after a few years, once her parents lost their legal claim over her. I stumbled through my questions. How could they force you into care? What was your treatment? Who was this man that you married? She stands. What do you call this tree, un charbonnier? She walks to the edge of the courtyard, pulls down the branch of a charcoal tree.
I find a letter from Chestnut Lodge to Nell. She has been doing some shopping and more and more is selecting softer feminine things, they write. 
Chestnut Lodge
We find her a delightful young lady who is working hard at solving her problem in living. I find a letter from a friend to my great-grandmother. She is not either a boy or a girl, no amount of psychiatry will ever be able to alter this.
