Madness Canada helps bring new voices, perspectives, and insights into the public understanding of mental health history. Our awards fund projects with contemporary relevance, community connection, and a focus on understudied histories or creative research approaches.
Established in memory of E.M. “Lil” Hewton and Dr. John D.M. Griffin, and originally awarded by the Friends of the CAMH Archives, the Hewton & Griffin Awards support innovative archival research exploring the Canadian history of psychiatry, mental health, addiction, and mad activism. Annual grants provide up to $5,000 to students and people with lived experience.
Our 2026 winners cover research into Canada’s Defence Research Board’s psychiatric research on Indigenous people, police assisted mental health response, and the social control of “morality” at the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital..
Madness Canada, dedicated to the history of Canadian psychiatry, mental health and addiction, have established two endowment funds (formerly awarded by the Friends of the CAMH Archives). These endowments annually provide funding in memory of their late colleagues, Ms. E.M. (Lil) Hewton and Dr. John D.M. Griffin, OC.
Our 2025 winners are researching the transition from lobotomy to early psychopharmaceuticals, mad art ecologies, writings from and about francophone women’s hospitalization in asylum, conversion therapy at CAMH, and the life and legacy of Mary Huestis Pengilly
Our 2024 award recipients are looking at Adolf Meyer’s ideas in Canadian psychiatry, psychiatric consumer/survivor businesses in Ontario, and geographical data related to confinement in Toronto’s Asylum for the Insane.
