Come on in
A community of doctors, patients, designers, architects, business owners and neighbours joined together to break down the walls and transform the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health with a groundbreaking idea in mind: That healing comes through openne
Since 1852, a wall has enclosed what was once called the Provincial Lunatic Asylum. Built in part by patients at the facility, it’s not clear if the taupe and charcoal-coloured bricks were put in place to protect them from the outside world or to protect the neighbouring community from schizophrenia, anxiety or the other challenges people inside were facing.
Either way, the wall served a function, separating what is now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the West Queen West community. And even though it has since been designated a heritage property, efforts to alter its symbolism are entrenched in the newest phase of redevelopment on the Queen Street West site. On June 21, local residents are invited to explore the new urban village as part of its official launch. Representatives of CAMH hope it will mark the first day of a long, close relationship.
“We are opening up our campus to the neighbourhood,” explains Dr. Catherine Zahn, president and CEO of CAMH. She hopes that breaking down the physical divisions between the hospital and the rest of the neighbourhood will reduce discrimination against clients at the hospital. “There doesn’t have to be a wall around us. We want to bring familiarity to the public so that there’s recognition that [mental illness] is part of life. People become ill, and they deserve respect.”
It’s a project that is 12 years in the making. Montgomery Sisam Architects, Kearns Mancini Architects and KPMB collaborated on the master plan for the site, breaking down outdated planning barriers to create an integrated community.
With input from Cannon Design and Stantec architects, they designed three new hospital buildings and transformed the 27-acre site into nine new city blocks. Half of each block is designated for non-CAMH purposes.
“For those neighbours who ventured into the grounds, they may have been walking their dogs on the big, open green spaces on the CAMH site,” says Alice Liang, a principal at Montgomery Sisam. “But in the future, they’ll be coming down to shop, to see gallery exhibits and to go to the Workman Theatre. That’s the whole idea—inviting and bringing them in.”
The integrated, urban village is also designed to create a smoother transition for CAMH clients to re-enter society after treatment. The new Bell Gateway building is the main entrance to the facility and will be a more accessible home for the Out of This World Café, a coffee shop run by CAMH clients that is currently set deep within the old cruciform. The Utilities and Parking building has centralized utilities to reduce the hospital’s environmental footprint, and the Intergenerational Wellness Centre will bring together clients of all ages, again based on the philosophy that integration, not segregation, promotes healing.
“The older facility is very much an internalized world,” Liang says. “Clients can become very disengaged from reality and the world around them.”
The first non-CAMH building is nearing completion and will have subsidized and market-price housing, and some retail. It sits where Lower Ossington Avenue will begin as it is expanded south of Queen Street, encouraging pedestrians to continue through the site.
“When you see the streets opening up and the green spaces being developed, it becomes a much more inviting place,” says City Councillor Mike Layton, who oversees the ward where the CAMH site lives. “There’s a neighbourhood feel to it, and that’s what everyone was going for.”
The community was consulted early on in the planning process. According to Rob Sysak, the executivedirector of the West Queen West BIA (Business Improvement Area), the CAMH Neighbourhood Liaison Committee is largely pleased with the results.
He says the BIA would have liked to see smaller business go into the first non-CAMH building to fit in with the entrepreneurial spirit of the commu- nity. Instead, it will house a Shoppers Drug Mart. (In future phases of the redevelopment, Liang says there will more be offices, dentists, dry cleaners and other businesses residents can use.)
Despite the discrepancies, Sysak credits frequent communication between the committee and representatives at CAMH as the reason why the vision accurately reflects the attitude of the neighbourhood.
“You can be who you want here, and that’s what makes West Queen West spectacular,” he says. [Mental illness] is not an embarrassment. Things happen. Take care of yourself.”
For the first time, donors were happy to put their names on CAMH’s new walls, and units no longer have to be numbered. On White Squirrel Way, named after the creature spotted in nearby Trinity-Bellwoods Park, the McCain Building is a condominium-like temporary home to clients who are preparing to leave following treatment. Liang says designers intentionally put dining and common areas at street level so that clients and passersby could engage with one another. Behind, the complex opens out into a landscaped courtyard. And beyond the garden, lies the wall.
“It’s a reminder of what patients had to do—their labour was used to build the wall,” Liang says. “But the neighbourhood wanted to keep it, and now it’s a beautiful backdrop for these gardens.”