Miller's Priority For Queen West Is A Protected Haven

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Toronto Talks...Mayor is not listening.

Breaking down barriers on Queen St.
Feb. 25.

I have my doubts that the remodelling of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at 1001 Queen St. W. will reduce the stigmatization of those with mental illness. I am 31 and have been a "client" at CAMH and various other mental-health institutions and wards in Toronto and Montreal for the past seven years.

I have been diagnosed and locked up and medicated and put in restraints. The real problems are inside the hospitals, not outside on the grounds or even in the "real world."

Healthy people may look at us and think that what we really want is a place in their realm. That's not always so. My disability is invisible. No one offers me a seat on the subway when I'm dizzy from all of the noises and lights in my head.

But when I sit outside the buildings of the CAMH on Queen W., watching the cars and people finding their way around the hospital instead of through it, I feel safe. I am at last among my own kind, and safe and separate from the world that is so hard to navigate.

Where will the mentally ill of Toronto find their safe haven if CAMH is to become a bustling part of the neighbourhood? Where will we go for that feeling of peace that only comes from being around one's own kind?

Claire Kobayakawa, Toronto

I agree with the comments attributed to Dr. Patricia Cavanagh lamenting the loss of the "asylum" aspect of CAMH. The notion of having major streets cut through the Queen St. W. site, dotted with cafés and retail space, is misguided and shows a profound disconnect between the in-patient population and the administration and redevelopment committee in understanding its own clients' situation.

As a lawyer, I have represented hundreds of the most chronic in-patients of the Queen St. site of CAMH for the last 12 years, and I recently spoke to a group of these clients about the redevelopment. They are opposed. They have a monthly income of $116 as a comfort allowance. Right now, there are a number of places in and around the centre where they are welcome and able to get their coffee and sit among the trees in the park surrounding the site, having a smoke. The place is their home, for better or for worse.

With $400 million, it would have been better to secure long-term supportive housing, to ensure better nursing care and increase staffing levels for current in-patients, or to rebuild an admittedly hideous facility into a beautiful setting.

But the current plan will just make my clients feel worse when everyone else around them is spending $5 on a latte.

They will be much more "other" than they are now.

Anita Szigeti, Toronto