Reinventing the asylum

New uses for old mental hospitals are innovative but highly controversial

KEN MACQUEEN | June 18, 2007 |
Macleans.ca

The massive old Crease Clinic of Psychological Medicine -- on the southern fringe of the grounds of the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital in the Vancouver suburban of Coquitlam -- exudes the sort of ominous aura that raises hairs on the back of your neck even on a glorious June day. This vague unease isn't helped by a crew on site from the science fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica filming a particularly creepy episode. "Terrified Man" and "Child in Cage" -- two of the labels on mobile dressing room doors -- hint at the fictional mayhem inside the decaying four-storey brick pile. Riverview, once a self-contained city for the mentally ill, has always played on the greater community's fears, more so now when many of its buildings are empty and neglected.

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