In all rural areas of Ontario, psychiatric hospitals have been closed fairly recently—between the late 1970s and early 1980s. One case in particular, that of the Northeastern Psychiatric Hospital in Timmins, an institution that offered services in French, inspired this study. The hospital was shut down suddenly and without warning in 1976, and—in its last phase—the deinstitutionalization process did not include the establishment of new, appropriate reception and care facilities to replace the old ones. We wondered if the same situation occurred elsewhere in the province. Language, the peripheral location of the communities, and the triple stigma of the study subjects (minority language, mental health and living in peripheral areas) are all of interest here. The present article draws from several interviews with caregivers, nurses, counsellors, psychologists and social workers who worked in the field of mental health services in northeastern Ontario from the 1960s to the present day.