Toronto CAMH Discovery Centre | 41.6m | 7s | CAMH | KPMB

JBM in Canadian Architect

Link to article

Mind Over Matter

With Each Generation, Designing the Optimum Mental Health Care Facility Presents a Unique Set of Challenges. The latest Incarnation of Toronto's Camh Raises Numerous Questions Regarding Ethics, Planning and Development.

PROJECT CENTRE FOR ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH, REDEVELOPMENT PHASE 1 (1A & 1B), TORONTO, ONTARIO

ARCHITECT THE C3 COMMUNITY CARE CONSORTIUM: KUWABARA PAYNE MCKENNA BLUMBERG ARCHITECTS, MONTGOMERY SISAM ARCHITECTS INC., KEARNS MANCINI ARCHITECTS LTD., IN JOINT VENTURE

TEXT JOHN BENTLEY MAYS

The sweeping $382-million re-creation of Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), in progress on the facility's historic site on Queen Street West, is an undertaking at a scale unprecedented in the history of Canadian psychiatric hospitals. But size and complexity are only parts of what makes the CAMH story unique. More important are the remarkable architectural ambitions of the project: to purge from the site all reminders of psychiatry's often dark past, and to translate into steel, brick and streetscape the most advanced contemporary thought about the nature of mental illness and its treatment.

"We are right at the cutting edge," says CAMH director and CEO Dr. Paul Garfinkel. "People need to be treated in a respectful, dignified, holistic manner that sometimes requires them to be confined in a hospital voluntarily or involuntarily. The more we normalize the hospital stay, in keeping with safety and security, the better it is for the person's recovery, and ultimate reintegration. Normalizing starts with an urban village, like the rest of the city, but it gets into the nature of public space, treatment space, what our hospital rooms look like. We want to make [the hospital] a more homelike setting, just as you would want in a normal community." Dr. Garfinkel is especially critical of the "biological reductivism" fashionable in psychiatry for the last 30 years, a theory that lays great emphasis on medication--often, he believes, at the expense of the patient as a whole person, and at the expense of the settings of his treatment.

Between now and 2018, almost all built vestiges of the 157-year-old psychiatric institution will be erased. Only two small utility buildings and what remains of the once-forbidding perimeter wall (by the Toronto firm Cumberland & Ridout, and city architect Kivas Tully) will survive from Victorian times. A forensic unit constructed in the 1970s will also remain, at least until its demolition sometime after 2018. According to the award-winning master plan crafted by George Dark and Frank Lewinberg of the Toronto firm Urban Strategies, the isolated 27-acre campus will be diced into nine city blocks by the extension of existing streets, and much of the existing green space will be buried under development.

The mid-rise buildings that will appear on these new urban blocks--designed by a consortium of the three Toronto offices of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, Montgomery Sisam, and Kearns Mancini--will house CAMH's patients, doctors and staff, as well as a host of non-CAMH services. While the exact nature and placement of the non-hospital uses have yet to be determined, a grocery store and health club, scientific institutes and laboratories, cafés and private residences have been mentioned.

In a further bid to realize Dr. Garfinkel's "urban village," and to eliminate the ancient stigma attached to monolithic, purpose-built asylums in secluded parks, the treatment of the ill will be handled at points scattered among the non-CAMH structures. The long, homely, three-storey administration and patient-care building by Mathers & Haldenby, which has dominated the Queen Street face of the institution since 1956, will vanish, to be replaced by a streetscape intended to harmonize with the neighbourhood's traditional fabric of small shops, restaurants, galleries, single-family homes and apartment buildings. The Workman Theatre, a space much loved by local residents and others throughout the city, will also disappear, though plans call for a new theatre to be built on Queen Street.

"We are taking a pioneering approach, trying to pull out of the traditional hospital model," says Terry Montgomery, of Montgomery Sisam Architects. "We want to break it down, and integrate the hospital with the city--make it a transition to the city, daily training to go back to the city." Quoting team architect Bruce Kuwabara, Montgomery said, "CAMH will be European scale, with Toronto identity."

A sample of what Montgomery and his architectural colleagues have in mind for CAMH's mixed-use development broke ground on the western edge of the site last autumn. Due for completion in early 2008, this $35-million construction phase on the new Fennings Street extension features a four-storey outpatient treatment facility, and three buildings designed to contain what CAMH calls "alternative milieu" dwellings: 72 motel-like rooms, with private washrooms and lockable doors, for patients who still need hospital care, but who have progressed beyond the acute stage of their illnesses.

According to Montgomery, the exteriors of these buildings will present a time-honoured image to the city beyond, with cladding in Toronto's Victorian red and buff brick, big bay windows and "recognizable porches." The architectural treatment of future buildings (which range in height between six and eight storeys) will likely change over the 11-year construction life of the project. But the basic thrust of the design is probably apparent in the earliest phase: contextual in styling and material palette, retiringly modernist, and more or less uniform, in accord with CAMH's decision to mute the visual difference--along with every other difference--between hospital facilities and non-hospital buildings.

The architectural strategy at the heart of the CAMH development has a venerable pedigree going back to the neighbourhood urbanism of Jane Jacobs, and to hospital reformers determined to see once-aloof institutions stitched more tightly into the fabric of urban life and structure. But the CAMH scheme is also part of the special history of asylum design, which has always reflected, with sometimes startling quickness and directness, the prevailing psychiatric wisdom of its era.

In early 19th-century Britain and North America, for example, democratic and populist tendencies in the culture at large led to drastic changes in official attitudes toward the insane. A new psychiatric elite, disgusted by the old regime of chaining the mad in dangerous prisons and filthy dungeons, called for a new hospital architecture to express the spirit of the times: open to fresh air and sunlight, in peaceful rural settings, from which cruelty and neglect had been banished in favour of good diet, sensible recreation and humane, individual care of the ill.

In 1846, when its cornerstone was laid, architect John George Howard's Neoclassical Provincial Lunatic Asylum--the first building on the present-day CAMH site--promised to be a great architectural incarnation of this new idea in psychiatry. Over the next few years, its walls and long galleries rose on a marshy plot reclaimed from the Fort York military reservation, in the still-sylvan countryside along Queen Street West. Howard's structure opened in 1850.

The early optimism about Howard's building, and the therapy it symbolized, were soon dimmed by overcrowding and, especially in the later 19th century, by a generally gloomy recognition that the mental disorders that doctors purported to treat were more intractable and insidious than an earlier generation of fresh-air physicians had believed. And not far beneath the troubled surface ran a question of class: early Victorian avant-garde psychiatrists, trained to treat maniacs from genteel, literate and religious backgrounds, were suddenly confronted by waves of seriously disturbed people thrown into the medical system by immigration, industrialization and urbanization, the resulting obliteration of the extended rural family, and by other vast social upheavals of the time.

By the 1970s, Howard's asylum was widely hated by patients, doctors and ordinary Torontonians. It had come to symbolize the most ghastly aspects of past psychiatry--the overcrowding, restraint and heroic treatment by surgery and severe drugs. But by then, new ideas of treatment were in the air--the "deinstitutionalization" of mental patients, and devolution of healing from large centralized hospitals into smaller units embedded in the old institution's campus or within the community. In 1976, the last remnants of Howard's asylum fell under the wrecker's ball after a conflict between architectural preservationists championed by Toronto architect A. J. Diamond, and a psychiatric and political establishment determined that the hospital must go. In its place rose four treatment units (by Somerville, McMurrich & Oxley), which seemed to observers at the time and since to resemble college dormitories dotting a suburban campus.

All four of these towers are to be bulldozed eventually. It's worth noting that these buildings, now doomed, were much admired when they were completed. In a 1975 article in The Canadian Architect about the just-finished project, we read about the delight of patients and staff with the new facilities' comfort, beauty and modernity. All that cheerfulness was in sharp contrast to their attitudes toward John George Howard's 1850 structure. "Their comments centred around its atmosphere of hopelessness, its resemblance to a jail and its depressing effects on their feelings."

One should be forgiven a certain thrill of schadenfreude upon finding Dr. Paul Garfinkel quoted in early 2007 in the Toronto Star, declaring that "the existing buildings"--viz., the '70s units that pleased so many--"are unacceptable in the 21st century of health care; they are cramped, undignified, disrespectful of the needs of individuals, and hardly inspiring of hope." So what makes CAMH sure they're not casting into brick and mortar merely the newest fad in psychiatry in the cycle of "breakthroughs" and disappointments that has been ongoing since the early 19th century?

They are not sure, Dr. Garfinkel told me. Hence, the plan to make each new structure architecturally generic, undedicated to a single use dictated by current medical ideas. "What we need in 2010 may very well not be the same in 2040. Our buildings are going to be flexible, because programming is going to change as understanding changes. I would be delighted about that, because it would indicate we are making progress rather than spinning."

Others are not so sure this development is a good thing. While the "urban village" is fixed in contemporary planning and architectural orthodoxy, the penetration of the CAMH campus by local streets and normal street life has drawn criticism from within the medical community. Dr. Patricia Cavanagh, a psychiatrist at Toronto Western Hospital who is familiar with CAMH, rues "the loss of an old-fashioned sense of asylum. That's the thing I am sorry to see go. Bringing traffic through will change the culture of the place, and this great green site will be gone. That's what I am mourning. You have severely ill people who are stigmatized by their absurd movements and expressions, and are avoided. But [the present CAMH facility] is one place where they are totally accepted."

Still other complaints have been levelled at the hospital by its neighbours along Queen Street West. In 2003, a coalition of patient activists, business and private opponents hauled CAMH before the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB)--a quasi-judicial body with wide-ranging powers over planning throughout the province--demanding (among other things) greater transparency by the hospital, studies of the development's impact on the cultural and natural environment, and building heights that harmonize with Queen Street's Victorian streetscape. "There was a lack of flow of information between CAMH and residents and stakeholders," says Sasha Jarh, a vocal member of the citizens' group. "Nobody knew what exactly would be built."

For corporate lawyer and local resident Peter Aziz, who led his neighbours' fight to the OMB, the hospital's insensitivity and lack of concern for local opinion is best symbolized by CAMH's proposal for a 50,000-square-foot grocery store on Queen Street. "It would have been completely out of proportion to the dynamic Queen West neighbourhood, which is comprised of small businesses and houses." Largely due to that new dynamism--the area is a strong focus of real-estate activity--CAMH is sitting on very valuable land, some of which will likely be sold to development partners over the next few years. "[CAMH] is quite prepared to sell out the neighbourhood for a fast buck," Aziz said.

In the OMB settlement eventually hammered out between the coalition and the hospital, most concerns were addressed to the satisfaction of the community group, said Stephen Bulger, owner of an important local photography gallery and an appellant in the OMB case. The size of the proposed grocery store was cut. A top-level site review committee was established with representation from local residents and businesses, to help open the massive process of renovation to public scrutiny. Peter Aziz thinks the hospital's recent move toward greater transparency is a "sham."

In fairness to those critical of the hospital's opacity--and while I did not sense any skulduggery on the part of the hospital--it should be said that there is indeed an air of mystery about this development. Nobody, not even CAMH administrators or the architects, could tell me exactly what will be built, and where, over the next decade. I think they do not know. Urban Strategies' master plan only goes so far as to divvy up the site between the hospital and other uses, which comes out to 50 percent for each. General guidelines for non-CAMH uses were established only in January of this year. Now the hunt begins for commercial and institutional tenants and development partners prepared to set up shop in a very stylish part of town, but in a complex largely populated by the mentally ill, many of them poor and some very sick. It promises to be a daunting task--a lot harder than, let's say, tucking a spiffy boutique into a cardiac ward.

The CAMH project is a bold experiment that will surely have strong impacts, some of which cannot be clearly foreseen--on the city, the life of its immediate community, and the lives of patients. The neighbours and patients have every right and reason to be concerned, especially now, when the precise future of the hospital is uncertain. But even for skeptics, it will be fascinating to watch the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health as it slowly rolls out toward the future over the next several years.

John Bentley Mays is an architecture critic and writes regularly for The Globe and Mail.

CLIENT CENTRE FOR ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH

ARCHITECT TEAM TERRY MONTGOMERY, JONATHAN KEARNS, BRUCE KUWABARA, ALICE LIANG, SAFDAR ABIDI, BILL COLASSO, ROBERT D'ERRICO, JOSE EMILA, CARSON FUNG, MARK JAFFAR, CHRISTINE LEU, DAN MCNEIL, LESLIE PARKER, EMMANUEL RESENDES, JAVIER ZELLER, GARTH ZIMMER

STRUCTURAL READ JONES CHRISTOFFERSEN LTD.

MECHANICAL RYBKA, SMITH AND GINSLER LIMITED/MMM GROUP

ELECTRICAL CROSSEY ENGINEERING LTD.

LANDSCAPE JANET ROSENBERG ASSOCIATES LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

FACILITIES PLANNING CONSULTANT RESOURCE PLANNING GROUP INC.

PLANNING AND URBAN DESIGN URBAN STRATEGIES INC.

CONTRACTOR EASTERN CONSTRUCTION (PHASE 1A)

AREA 628,700 FT2

BUDGET: $180 M

COMPLETION PHASE 1A--EARLY 2008; PHASE 1B--2012

47237-39717.jpg


47237-39719.jpg
 
Thanks for posting that!
I've always been fascinated by the enduring link between psychiatry and architecture - if there is any medical profession more versed in the conversation between biology and environment, I know it not - I think JBM is bang on in that regard. In fact, I've kinda always harboured a fantasy of writing a book on it (or at least a photo diary).
Architectural preservation in the face of enduring psychological pain and suffering (and the changing views and, indeed, rights, of the mentally ill) just doesn't seem humane given the very intimate relationship between psychiatric patients and their hosptial/place of living. On the other hand, one cannot deny the vigour and idealism that psychiatric institutional architecture represented - for this reason, many such buildings ARE architecturally, and culturally significant.
 
Architectural preservation in the face of enduring psychological pain and suffering (and the changing views and, indeed, rights, of the mentally ill) just doesn't seem humane given the very intimate relationship between psychiatric patients and their hosptial/place of living. On the other hand, one cannot deny the vigour and idealism that psychiatric institutional architecture represented - for this reason, many such buildings ARE architecturally, and culturally significant.

If 1975 were 2007, would you still support demolishing 999 Queen?
 
None of these articles give the public any idea of what the clients of the centre think about the current facility and their thoughts on the new project. We just get presumptions. What if they like the current building? It would be like destroying their home, their stable base.

Why is there a lack of information flow to the community? Isn't the ideal of the project to somehow better integrate the hospital into the city? Oh, a large grocery store was planned (it would have been like the Dominion in Liberty Village). It's secondary to the well-being of the mentally ill, but still important.

Finally, it's odd that in that article, the term "patient" is only used, even though CAMH stresses the term "client". It's supposed to erase the stigma but doesn't seem too effective in that article, considering they even spoke with Dr. Garfinkel.
 
Adma,
As I tried to make clear, I believe this issue is anything but an easy one to decide. Psychiatric inpatients - the residents of these institutions - have a long history of being sideswiped off roads paved with all sorts of good intentions. Perhaps more so than any other structure, psychiatric institutions are suffused with a bevy of zeitgeisten - and it behoves us to consider these carefully before leaping to the barricades; emotional, cultural, social, medical, and yes, architectural history weighs heavy on these structures.
A psychiatric institution is a residence - the Asylum moreso than more recent structures. Indeed, it is more than that, in that while most of the city's residents can come and go as they please, or relocate depending on their financial ability and desires, many inpatients cannot. Despite being constructed with the best of intentions, overcrowding, social upheaval, theories of psychiatric treatment, and notions of the rights and freedoms due to the mentally ill (our modern notion of consent did not exist prior to the Nuremburg trials) have all had a hand in how the Asylum had matured over the years, and how its residents in particular perceived it.

I freely admit, however, that the same massive changes in society, medical practice, and rights and freedoms are keenly reflected in the architecture of these institutions - moreso, arguably, than any other civic building. In reflecting the many spirts of the many ages, these structures really do speak for the hopes, dreams, and ideals that often make heritage structures, well, heritage structures... they speak to the contributions of our forebearers.

As such, I guess I would find myself reluctantly swinging the wrecker's ball at the admitedly beautiful Asylum - it's ideals reflected, much as Plato's, imperfectly by the human condition and in the complexities of our world... with such emotionally and physically scarring impact upon some of the most vulnerable members of our society (and indeed, only recently have we acknowledged their membership in it) - those who not only have difficulty speaking for themselves, but from whom we have rent that ability all to frequently in the past. Thus, we as a society (at the very least defined in a strictly medico-legal sense) have some measure of responsibility to ensure that that home is as comfortable and non-threatening as possible.
 
As such, I guess I would find myself reluctantly swinging the wrecker's ball at the admitedly beautiful Asylum - it's ideals reflected, much as Plato's, imperfectly by the human condition and in the complexities of our world... with such emotionally and physically scarring impact upon some of the most vulnerable members of our society (and indeed, only recently have we acknowledged their membership in it) - those who not only have difficulty speaking for themselves, but from whom we have rent that ability all to frequently in the past. Thus, we as a society (at the very least defined in a strictly medico-legal sense) have some measure of responsibility to ensure that that home is as comfortable and non-threatening as possible.

But again, the trouble is--in 2007?!? If you thought the outcry was vivid enough in 1975, imagine it in 2007. Or, if you think the recent outcry over anything from 48 Abell (same neighbourhood) to the Riverdale half-round (health-care parallels) was vivid enough, imagine it over 999 Queen, had it survived to this day.

And furthermore, if you're so willing to expend 999 Queen, then whither something like the old Don Jail, which might be even more "unadaptably" stigmatized by its former function and associations? Yet surely as part consequence of 999 Queen's fate, the notion of demolishing the Don has been deemed barbaric by anyone with any shred of heritage sensitivity over the 3 decades since it closed. And now, the Don Jail's earmarked for adaptive reuse for Bridgepoint. Contentiously so, perhaps (and not just because of the collateral threat to the half-round); but, still.

And then there's the matter of Lakeshore Psychiatric; maybe not with 999's loudly bad rep, but similarly obsolescent and functionally-stigmatized upon closure, and perhaps further handicapped by being "away from it all"--yet it's now a successful adaptive-reuse work-in-process for Humber College.

So with those examples in mind, why shouldn't John Howard's tour de force have been any less successfully adaptable? Had it been retained and adapted, we might well be telling a different story today.

Which, perhaps, may beg a little de/reconstruction of a "real story" that's a little more nuanced--was it the building per se that was at fault, or was it the users? And maybe less the patients per se, than those (and especially the higher-ups) treating them? "Bad attitude" perhaps--esp. among those "in power"? Who pathologized the place?

Look: I know from childhood dealings with overzealous "autism" diagnoses, but also with following along the planning process here, stakeholders "having their say", etc. Too many of those in the psychiatric health care field have this (self-servingly?) pathological tendency to overpathologize. And on behalf of ideals that are, to put it kindly, insipid. Tut tut, oh dear. Everything's about platitudinous "stigmas" and the fighting thereof. Hey, no wonder those under their care vegetate in their own madness.

With this in mind, is it any wonder an attitude of bleeding-heart heritage philistinism is perpetuated? In these current plans, certain professionals were even doubting the wisdom of keeping what remained of the wall, because of "stigmas" etc--but look: in this day and age, the only persons left stigmatizing the old asylum wall are overzealous psychiatric professionals, and maybe a few neighbourhood old-timers and urban ignoramii (cf. the anti-Matador crowd). To the artsy/gentrifying crowd, though, the wall is at worst benign, and at best a not-easily-expendable landmark object with an aesthetic quality and a tale to tell. Wall or no wall, the fruits/nuts/flakes are still there; and they'll still be there as the place urban-village's itself. If you have a problem with that, then either move'em out of there, or move yourself out of there. Fashionable (and destructive) "urban correctness" is just a "stigma"-camoflauging smokescreen.

porky%20in%20wackyland.jpg
 
More from JBM on CAMH

Rethinking a home away from home
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS

From Friday's Globe and Mail
February 15, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST

At some point in life, just about everyone spends some time in a dwelling designed for temporary use. It could be a bunkhouse at camp, or a university dormitory, or a resort or business hotel. It might be a hospital room.

For those afflicted by mental illness or substance abuse, it could be one of the three new transitional-care buildings soon to go on line at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Like dorms, hotels and every other kind of temporary lodging done with a view to art as well as utility, these low-rise structures provided strong challenges to the architects who crafted them — challenges the designers have met with imagination and deep sensitivity for future residents.

Parts of the first phase in the $382-million overhaul of CAMH's historic campus on Queen Street West, these handsome buildings have been designed by a consortium of three well-known Toronto firms: Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, Montgomery Sisam, and Kearns Mancini. These architects were given an interesting mandate: to create shelter for patients who are past the acute stages of their illnesses, but not yet ready to go out on their own. The results are three-storey brick and steel blocks that more closely resemble small, modern, well-made apartment buildings than the dull, glowering psychiatric hospitals of yesteryear.

At the heart of the scheme is a simply appointed room for one patient, lockable and furnished with an ensuite bathroom and a large operable window. Six of these well-proportioned rooms are connected by a short corridor to a common dining and living area. The barricaded nurse's station typical of psychiatric institutions has been abolished; staff will do their duty in the lounge. (I wonder how nurses will like this arrangement. Where will they escape if their patients' idea of a good time is watching endless reruns of wrestling matches on TV?)

But these private elevators, and the overall low-rise residential sense of the project, are not the only moves the architects have made to ensure their buildings don't look like old-school health-care facilities. The cladding is in beautiful wine-red brick and (as a cost-cutting measure that turned out well) light stucco. These colours harmonize nicely with the old brick houses in the neighbourhood.

Each structure has been given a rear courtyard framed by the stucco and brick inner surfaces and by what's left of the Victorian perimeter wall — a once-hated, now-loved construction by the distinguished Toronto firm Cumberland & Ridout, and city architect Kivas Tully.

The best thing about these buildings, however, is the attention paid to light. There are large windows everywhere — windows in rooms and corridors, window seats at the ends of hallways, wide views from every level. As project architect Terry Montgomery explained to me, the old logic of hospital design dictated that visitors step from the outside world directly into a cave hollowed out of a great mass of opaque masonry.

The CAMH facilities he and his group have realized, in contrast, invite patients and visitors into a lobby that immediately opens toward the courtyard beyond. There is no darkness anywhere, and a fine porosity that, I imagine, will be something patients will appreciate about their temporary digs.

Now that I have praised several things about the generally excellent first phase of the CAMH build-out, I can't leave the project without mentioning one abomination.

The whole idea behind the master plan for the site has been to create what CAMH director Paul Garfinkel has called an "urban village." That means, in part, extending the ordinary street grid into the campus, which has hitherto been one big, isolated chunk of real estate. In principle, normalizing the relationship between CAMH and the surrounding urban fabric has been accomplished in the first phase. The alignment of Fennings Street, which has long dead-ended at Queen Street, has indeed been punched south, and now lies alongside the transitional-care buildings, the out-patient facility and a small park. Public lighting, sidewalk widths and such look like what you'd find on any Toronto street.

But at the point this alignment enters the CAMH site, it is Fennings Street no more. It becomes, of all things, White Squirrel Way. So much for normality! While I don't have a problem with hospital's determination to pay homage to the albino rodents visitors occasionally see scampering across the CAMH property — why not a statue? — I object to breaking the very continuity with the surrounding cityscape that the hospital says it wants to promote.

In any case, White Squirrel Way is the kind of silly moniker developers give to suburban cul-de-sacs. Fennings Street, on the other hand, commemorates the Victorian public official Fennings Taylor. Better the name of an honourable Toronto bureaucrat on the revamped CAMH site than that of an eccentric rat!
 
I live in the area and I'm impressed at what has happened over winter!

In the winter, I tend to avoid that barren area of my neighborhood because it's dark, windswept and cold. I gravitate to Queen, East of Shaw.

Because of this, I've missed a lot of the progress and was sort of shocked at how much change has happened between Dufferin and Shaw.

The Bohemian lofts have begun construction and nearly an entire block West from Dovercourt has been demolished to prepare for the building. I didn't recognize Queen St. when I drove down Lisgar. I was lost for a moment.

Several trendy restaurants are replacing some of the art galleries and the Gladstone Hotel's revival has turned out beautiful. Gladstone's reclaiming of a quiet neighborhood is forthcoming once the Dufferin jog is eliminated and Gladstone becomes a peaceful tree lined side street once again.

The Beaconsfield (bar) has changed that little corner along with the Drake Hotel. It's became a really quaint little area with british style spherical lamps and a stone wall.

These spherical lamps are also seen down the new CAMH city road: Fennings St. The new CAMH buildings along this street are attractive and fit the neighborhood well. For the first time ever, I've felt attracted and invited to walk into the CAMH grounds.

I can't wait for the monolithic main building to be demolished in the winter of 2009.
 
I live in the area and I'm impressed at what has happened over winter!

In the winter, I tend to avoid that barren area of my neighborhood because it's dark, windswept and cold. I gravitate to Queen, East of Shaw.

Because of this, I've missed a lot of the progress and was sort of shocked at how much change has happened between Dufferin and Shaw.

The Bohemian lofts have begun construction and nearly an entire block West from Dovercourt has been demolished to prepare for the building. I didn't recognize Queen St. when I drove down Lisgar. I was lost for a moment.

Several trendy restaurants are replacing some of the art galleries and the Gladstone Hotel's revival has turned out beautiful. Gladstone's reclaiming of a quiet neighborhood is forthcoming once the Dufferin jog is eliminated and Gladstone becomes a peaceful tree lined side street once again.

The Beaconsfield (bar) has changed that little corner along with the Drake Hotel. It's became a really quaint little area with british style spherical lamps and a stone wall.

These spherical lamps are also seen down the new CAMH city road: Fennings St. The new CAMH buildings along this street are attractive and fit the neighborhood well. For the first time ever, I've felt attracted and invited to walk into the CAMH grounds.

I can't wait for the monolithic main building to be demolished in the winter of 2009.

The main building belongs in the oft-mentioned historical buildings district.
 
I'm talking about the old looking one. What was it, 999 Queen St?

EDIT: "White Squirrel Way"? Ugh. And reading through some of the site, Ossington Ave. is going to become "Freedom Drive" south of Queen St. Terrible, terrible. If you're trying to become part of the city, use the regular street names please. Just blah.
 
^ I have to agree to that. The original concept was to convert the CAMH grounds into part of the city by continuing the street grid.

Ossington will only reach an extended Adelaide instead of King as I originally thought it would. Most cars will continue to turn right or left @ Queen.

Nonetheless, the pending changes are already showing benefits as I mentioned above. I do feel compelled to go down the new Fennings St. when previously I would walk past these grounds as fast as possible.
 
I'm talking about the old looking one. What was it, 999 Queen St?

EDIT: "White Squirrel Way"? Ugh. And reading through some of the site, Ossington Ave. is going to become "Freedom Drive" south of Queen St. Terrible, terrible. If you're trying to become part of the city, use the regular street names please. Just blah.

That sounds disappointing, though fortunately the institution has never had a conservative attitude towards name changes.
 
Re: "White Squirrel Way". This addresses a popular Queen St. W. urban myth (or maybe a truth?) that the very rare albino squirrels hopping around Trinity-Bellwoods Park were the result of mutated squirrels eating toxic waste from the asylum. They were at one point plentiful but eventually, expanding developments ongoing on the CAMH grounds chased the quasi-blind rodents across the street to the park. Many never made the blind gamble, were run over and never made the migration... hence the rarity of these little boogers.
 

Back
Top