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1001 Queen Street Master Plan personal thoughts by Adam Sobolak
I speak as somebody who's had a long and active engagement with the
built fabric of Toronto, including activity and membership within ACO/TRAC
(which, of course, helped sponsor the recent book on the Provincial
Asylum). But I also speak as a survivor of depression as well as an
overzealous childhood "autism" diagnosis, and while my experiences have
only scarcely involved the Queen Street property (and not at all as an
inpatient), my insights probably carry a retroactive
critical-yet-empathetic undertone of "the inside" about them. (And it
helps, too, that my mother --who lived around the corner from "999 Queen" as
a child, and was party to its hush-hush stigma with at least one
neighbourhood parent mysteriously "taken there"-- was motivated into
studying psychology in part by my experiences.)
As we all know, the Queen Street site has had a horrific last century in
public image and public relations, whether through the real-or-created sins
"generated" by 999, or through the well-meaning attempts to alleviate or
atone for said sins (the destruction and replacement of 999, or the
deinstitutionalization/"community-based" solutions that led to group homes
unscrupulously proliferating in nearby neighbourhoods, etc). And the
morale, curiously enough, may be lower among staff than among the
devil-may-care-or-otherwise-impaired inpatients --for those on staff,
especially, it's a site that's been haunted into dysfunction. The
"superblock" that's existed in one form or another since the 1840s isn't a
problem in and of itself; but in its desultory, latently needle-parky
current state, nobody's been able to rally up the good and lasting
inspiration to "do something constructive" with it. The big paradox is
that had John Howard's masterpiece been saved and restored, the
superblock --integral to its setting-- might *not* be seen as part of the
problem. In fact, it, too, might now be "restored" to a closer semblance
of its c19 landscaping. Thus when they destroyed 999 Queen, they
theoretically destroyed the raison d'etre for cherishing the superblock
setting as well --it heretofore became as uncherishably expendable as the
50s and 70s buildings that remained.
Because of the depth of history behind the hospital site *as a whole*, I
have some strong misgivings about the self-conscious desire to eliminate
its existing, unified, century-and-a-half-old parklike character on behalf
of "urban integration" in the name of addressing a "stigma". At the same
time, I understand that the proposed Urban Village concept is one with
strong Toronto precedents (St. Lawrence, et al), and the Queen Street
scheme, due no doubt to the institutional sponsorship, promises to be one
of the better efforts of its sort. But while urban-village principles may
make sense in, for instance, clean-slatish "brownfield" circumstances (as
at St. Lawrence, or even the Massey-Harris lands next door), their
application here remains questionable. In a sense, it's only a kinder,
gentler version of that same fatal desire to will away a "poisonous" past
which claimed John Howard's building a quarter century ago. And the more
the new scheme "integrates", paradoxically, the more it violates the site's
original spirit--if you must go through with this at all, please, make sure
the site's still "shaded orange" on the map. It must not vanish into the
same integrated-out-of-existence urban miasma as the original Upper Canada
College on King, or the original Toronto General Hospital on Gerrard, or
Scarborough Beach Amusement Park, or any number of old estates around town
(or, for that matter, the Massey-Harris complex).
And while the extension of existing gridded street patterns constitutes
a
kind of urbanist "politically correct" fashion (although keep in mind that
the "pre-integrated" urbanism of neighbourhoods like Parkdale haven't made
the group-home culture any less inhospitable or hostile), I have strong
concerns about the extension of Ossington into the grounds, because the
street has by historical divine right been sturdily founded upon Queen on
axis with Howard's portico and dome (or the ghost thereof--no comment on
the present pallid 50s front with the crude 70s pillbox up front). With
the new plan, that sense of a strong and stately south end to Ossington has
not only been violated through dissipation, it appears to have not been
given much thought at all--the absence of a southward Ossington view in the
"Tour of the Urban Village" indicates so much. (The main southward-looking
distinguishing features, from what I can discern, are a too-slight bend in
the road and an overhead pedestrian bridge --the latter, an ironic hallmark
of "anti-urbanism" within an otherwise urbanizing plan. Ossington deserves
better. Much better.)
But the clearest signal of the sadly self-perpetuating allergy and
superstition attached to all vestiges of "999" and what it represented is
the continued debate over "the wall" --and most particularly, what remains
of it along Shaw. Regardless of how much of the wall's fabric is
"original" or not (the argument over which is immaterial; if you're going
to preserve some of the remaining outbuildings, why not the wall?), this
debate only further infantilizes the "urban integration" ideal. In my
estimation, to remove the wall along Shaw would be kowtowing to the
mentality that led to 999's destruction in the first place. Perhaps it's a
sentiment held by fatally oversensitive CAMH staff eager to brush away the
"tainted" past in whatever way shape or form, a literalization of the
hackneyed concept of "breaking down the walls" attached to overcoming
mental illness. And you may toss in neighbourhood oldtimers still
possessed over memories of the pre-1975 "blight" in their midst, or a few
dumb-yuppie newcomers for whom the wall *might* interfere with their
ill-informed rose-coloured vision of urbanity. However, keep in mind that
with John Howard's 999 an over quarter-century distant memory, the Shaw
wall--which is, after all, only a fragment of the original engirding the
hospital site--strikes a benign presence nowadays; any "threat" the
property now poses surely cannot be blamed on it. Indeed, with its warm
c19 brickwork, the Shaw wall elicits a latently less hostile, more
naturally sympathetic reaction these days than either the 50s or 70s
edifices on the site (although the 70s complex was ironically intended as a
"humane" antidote, akin to a suburban community college, to 999's
horrifically outmoded facilities). In fact, the wall along Shaw is likely
the site's most distinguished extant built object, conceived as it is
(unlike the remaining works buildings or S and W "party line" walls) for
"public display". With that point under consideration, to overzealously
remove the wall on behalf of an imagined urban "higher purpose" would be
unbelievably shortsighted. Like it or not, it helps define the site --the
site as an important feature in Toronto history. And it isn't nearly as
"penitential" as it once must have seemed. Furthermore, consider that the
neighbourhood has followed a distinctly artsy or artsy-pretension
trajectory over the past generation --a contingent better conditioned than
any to creatively "see through the stigma".
Though the most fundamental problem may be that, like much modern art,
mental institutions (and other institutions of confinement and/or
incarceration, such as prisons) are too "difficult" for "mere mortals" to
respond to positively, although they've long been fashionable idée fixes
for architectural historians or Foucaultian intellectuals or theorists of
the sublime. But alleviating this disjuncture somewhat is the fact that
the long-in-uncertain-limbo old Don Jail has been the "star" of the last
two "Doors Open" events, surely a sign that intellectual fashion is not
nearly so perennially locked-in as supposed (if literary and cinematic
horror can be a draw, why not its archi-historical counterpart?). It's
true that there's a disconcerting, perhaps repellent "immediacy" to obvious
psychiatric presence; but that would be the case regardless of what form
architecture takes. It is the case amidst the crude
group-home/rooming-house conversions of Parkdale, or the missions and soup
kitchens and homeless shelters elsewhere about town, or --to take an extreme
case-- in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. And as long as these continue to
be among the people "served" here, it'll be the case in the proposed "Urban
Village".
Too much of this talk about "alleviating stigmas", in fact, strikes the
same insipid, simplistic note as much populist criticism of architectural
and artistic modernism, painting it as a wholesale failure, bla bla bla --no
wonder many of the afflicted feel misunderstood and condescended to.
(Remember the old saw about the fine line between genius and madness.)
Thus, the self-perpetuating in-house staff phobia toward "999" and all it
represented becomes akin to, say, a phobia toward Mies van der Rohe's TD
Centre and all that *it* represents. (And any number of thoughtful
aesthetes would warn you that to "humanize" the TD Centre is a philistine
no-no.)
I'd suggest that a good approach to "dealing with" the site is to
confront, co-opt, adapt, and accept, even celebrate --not to deny or
whitewash. "Confrontation" may sound like too difficult a concept to
accept --keeping in mind that "confrontational behaviour" underlies why many
are treated here-- but remember that Jack Diamond's 1970s plan for the reuse
of 999 was exactly the kind of creative, constructive "confrontation" (of a
stigma, above all) I have in mind. And keeping the wall along Shaw, etc,
would be in that same constructively confrontational spirit. Indeed, the
TRAC/ACO book on the Provincial Asylum is a gem of constructive
confrontation, presenting it all as plain history, as a history of the
site, of architecture, of psychiatric care--and in so doing, proving that
historiography is stigma's best subversive. (Even the darker "final years"
of 999 are humanized, allowing us to sense the building as less of a raw
horrorshow in the end than legend has it.)
Needless to say, the denizens of Lower Manhattan currently have a
monumental task of "confrontation" ahead of them--how else may they live at
peace with Sep 11 and its aftereffects? It's certainly better to confront
than to flee and shrink--to confront the *place*, of course. Catastrophe
should not stigmatize the environs of Ground Zero.
Perhaps that's the tragedy of the CAMH's Queen Street site; for eons, it
has been a Ground Zero relative to its immediate neighbourhood. Or at
least, its landlords have forever been incredibly self-conscious regarding
that notion--and forever incapable of alleviating it. Maybe they're
underestimating--especially today--something stronger within the
neighbourhood. Too strong even for easy "urban village" panaceas.
And finally --it's interesting to compare the fate of the three historic
provincial psychiatric "campuses" within the GTA. At Lakeshore, early
plans for "urban villaging" the site have taken a backseat to simple
creative renovation and reuse of the existing buildings, and maintenance of
the grounds as parkland. And at Whitby, as if to demonstrate that there's
a plethora of architectural approaches to psychiatric care these days, the
reverse has taken place --a wonderful "village" of artsy-craftsy early-c20
dormitories has been replaced by, well, a single unified "megastructure".
Oh well...
Adam Sobolak
November 2001
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