Future for Riverview: can Coquitlam’s closed asylum be repurposed?
Posted December 2, 2020 1:31 pm.
Last Updated December 2, 2020 2:16 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
COQUITLAM (NEWS 1130) — Advocates believe the former psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam should be repurposed to provide large-scale mental health support, but could Riverview be a part of a larger solution in B.C.?
“It was built as an asylum. We are not asking for it to be reopened by any means. We are asking for it to be repurposed,” says Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart.
More than 2,000 people in Vancouver alone self-identified as being homeless in the 2020 homeless count. Forty-five per cent of them named mental health issues as being the cause, and 60 per cent said it was due to an addiction. The number of people with mental illness living on Metro Vancouver streets continues to grow year after year.
CityNews takes a look at the provincial government’s plans for the land, and what it could mean for the future of B.C.’s mental health supports in the last of a three-part series on Riverview.
Plans to ‘renew’ Riverview
In 2013, BC Housing began a consultation on a plan called “Renewing Riverview.”
Two years later, a plan was released, envisioning a mental health care district with doctors’ offices and transitional housing. In 2020, the vision still has yet to be completed.
As of today, there are 184 people receiving some form of treatment on the grounds. In a co-interview with BC Housing and the Kwikwetlem First Nation, who work in partnership on the land, they explain just because the institution shut down, it doesn’t mean the site hasn’t grown.
“Since the hospital’s closure in 2012, five new facilities were built and that created 183 new beds, and the most recent is the Red Fish Healing Center and that is set to open next year,” says Lauren English, director of Riverview Lands Development with BC Housing.
The new centre is, for the most part, only a replacement for the current 94 beds at the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction. It only adds an additional 11 to the system as a whole.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has really raised this again; how limited, how crowded our housing is for people who are living in poverty,” says Marina Morrow, a professor of health policly.
While running for re-election in October, Premier John Horgan promised more front-line support to deal with B.C’s overdose crisis and said work continues to re-open the long-closed psychiatric hospital.
When asked about the delay, BC Housing told CityNews the provincial election had put things on hold, and a larger scale project would be re-evaluated in the coming months.
Should Riverview stay in the past?
But there are those who think the entire plan is the wrong move and are against the idea of using the land altogether due to its complicated past.
“I think Riverview could open, should open under the right circumstances, and using our best knowledge to care for people and keep them out of harm’s way, and keep the public out of harm’s way. It could be a beautiful thing,” says Leslie Mcbain, from Moms Stop the Harm.
Mental health and substance use support advocates continue to say help can’t come soon enough for our most vulnerable. But historian Megan J. Davies. stresses it needs to be the right kind of help. While the asylum is no more, she feels remnants of institutions like Riverview live on in the way treatment is approached.
“It’s a place with a heavy history and people have a lot of feelings there, and I’m not sure if that is the right place,” Davies says.
“The power structures are still there, the attitudes, the discrimination the stigmas are still there and it’s almost like we try and ignore them, because the institution itself has disappeared,” she adds.
This is the last story in a three-part special series on Riverview Hospital. Catch CityNews Vancouver at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. here.
