We called it the Mental and thought nothing of it. No more than eeny, meeny, miney, mo and who we were supposed to catch by the toe.

Wish Mooney’s earliest memory in life is finding a corpse in the Waterford River. Jarring stuff for a four-year-old, yet far from the most shocking or bizarre he would witness growing up in west end St. John’s next door to the Waterford Hospital. Or, as it was unabashedly labelled before the advent of political correctness: the Mental.

An unfortunate moniker, but one legitimately derived from the original name of the place—the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases—when it opened in 1854. Not until 1972 would it be renamed after the river that runs by it. But in Mooney’s world, which revolved mostly in and around the asylum’s drab, depressing confines in the mid-1970s, it was colloquially the Mental, just as its largely despondent inhabitants were the mental patients.

Thus was the oft-surreal environment that unavoidably enveloped Wish and the rest of the Irish Catholic Mooney clan, including the quietly acknowledged other realities of the place—the sad, the tragic, the maniacal. Little did Wish ever consider that any or all of that would come full circle later in life when, as the court reporter for the Daily News, he would be thrust into the middle of his own life story, replete with shocking conclusion.

Brian Callahan was born in St. John’s and is a graduate of St. Bonaventure’s and Brother Rice High School. He completed two years of English and political science courses at Memorial University before getting his start in media with the former Q93 and KIXX FM radio station in downtown St. John’s.But the bulk of his career was spent at the Evening Telegram, later the Telegram, as a reporter and editor for just over seventeen years, from 1990 to 2007. He subsequently went to work for his former Telegram colleague Ryan Cleary at the Independent newspaper before its unfortunate demise in 2008. In September 2009, Brian began working with the CBC as a commentator, news and current affairs producer, online reporter, and periodic host of the Fisheries Broadcast.In 2016, after nearly thirty years in journalism, Brian took a step back and decided to focus more on his own writing and music. Meanwhile, he took a job with Belfor in the construction industry, initially as an asbestos abatement worker and eventually into all facets of ripping apart structures, clearing the sites, and building them back up again. He currently works as a parliamentary transcription editor with the Hansard division of the House of Assembly.When he’s not in the office, he continues work on the next instalment of Wish Mooney’s adventures and enjoys playing gigs with his rock band, The Mics. Brian is also a sports junkie and loves playing a game of ball when time and schedule permit.

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