Centre wants new name, one location for services
The Mab-mackay Rehabilitation Centre is facing some big changes – everything from a new name to possibly a new location for hearingimpaired clients.
The centre wants to consolidate its clinical services at one site but hasn’t decided whether it will do that at its location on Sherbrooke St. W. adjacent to Concordia’s Loyola campus. It can’t combine its operations at its Mackay Centre site on Décarie Blvd. because “we don’t all fit there,” said Christine Boyle, executive director of the Mab-mackay.
“We haven’t decided if we’re going to stay on the MAB site or go elsewhere,” Boyle told The Gazette.
The centre hopes to make that decision next month, she said.
Their operations can fit at the MAB site with substantial renovations, said Boyle, who called moving a big step. The centre has been at its Sherbrooke St. site for 100 years, she said.
It would cost close to $9 million or $10 million to bring the MAB site up to norms, Boyle said. “It’s very old and it hasn’t been maintained because it never got any public money. It was also built over a hundred years with this addition, that addition .... It’s not user-friendly, especially for a blind population.”
The process is time-consuming because everything has to be investigated, Boyle said, such as where clients and staff come from and the proximity to its referring agencies. Most of its referrals in pediatrics come from the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
The centre is moving all its deaf and hard-of-hearing services from its Mackay location to the MAB site this summer. The centre has many clients who have a vision and hearing problem, Boyle said. “They’ve had to go to two campuses to get services. Now it will all be under one roof.”
The Montreal Association for the Blind and the Mackay Rehabilitation Centre merged in 2006 to become the Mab-mackay Rehabilitation Centre. The rehab centre will undergo a name change and new branding, Boyle said.
“Mab-mackay is a mouthful. It’s unknown. It’s mispronounced, it’s misspelled. It means nothing to the French community,” Boyle said. “It was simply when we merged we took our two names and stuck them together because we didn’t think that the time was ripe to create a new identity.”