The airy, well-lit new $132-million Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre — the first public hospital in Canada to be built and maintained with private funds — held its official opening Wednesday.

Staff will begin moving next week from the Royal Ottawa Hospital that the new building is replacing into the new offices, and teaching and research spaces.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty helped open the new building, praised by patients and former patients for its bright, airy interior.
(CBC)

Patients will move in the week after that, and then the cramped century-old complex that has housed the facility since 1961 will be demolished.

Premier Dalton McGuinty was on hand for the opening ceremony of the new building, which offers no additional beds or new programs, but was completed six weeks early and on budget by a group of private companies called the Healthcare Infrastructure Company of Canada.

McGuinty gave a speech in an atrium flooded with sunlight from many of the 108 skylights and hundreds of windows in the new building.

He quoted an observation of Winston Churchill: "First we shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us."

McGuinty added, "Turns out our physical space actually has a profound influence on how we relate to one another and how we feel about ourselves."

Worker safety not addressed: union leader

Not everyone feels good about the new building.

Marlene Rivier, leader of the hospital's staff union, said rooms in the building have too many obstacles between staff work space and exits, and that is a safety hazard, considering some of the situations workers have found themselves in during the past.

To illustrate, she described an incident two years ago where a patient held a worker in an office at knifepoint for several hours.

Bill Miller, who represents patients at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, was more inclined to echo McGuinty's sentiment than Rivier's. He said he was enjoying the nicer furniture and the sunlight in one of the common areas.

"Sitting in here, people are going to feel a whole lot better," he said, although he said getting used to so many changes at once might be difficult for some patients.

New building has openness, privacy

Simon Perkins a former patient of the Royal Ottawa, took a tour of the new facility on Thursday.

He said the new building has many improvements over the old complex, in which buildings were connected by dreary and disorienting tunnels. He was admitted there at age 16 after being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Perkins said he likes the bold signage in the new building, which he contrasted with a common practice of keeping addiction wards and other stigmatized units hidden away.

"Now it's clearly out in front," he said. "It's OK to have substance abuse. It's OK to have a mood disorder."

In the old building, up to three patients shared each room, separated by curtains. Bathrooms were also shared.

The new building has private rooms and washrooms, and Perkins said that will make a big difference.

"If you're paranoid or anxious, you don't really want to share a bathroom with someone else," he said.

He added that the building was more welcoming overall, like a children's hospital, and suggested that now people won't be afraid to bring their children to visit mentally ill relatives and friends.

There is another change coming that may bring more children to the facility: construction is scheduled to begin on a youth wing for the new building in a few months.

Old building opened in 1910

The old Royal Ottawa Hospital building was originally built as the Lady Grey Hospital, which admitted its first patient in 1910.

The Lady Grey was a sanitorium, a specialized hospital for tuberculosis patients.

It became a mental health clinic in 1961.

In 2002, the Conservative government of Ontario announced that the building would be redeveloped as the first privately built and operated hospital in the province.

In 2003, the new Liberal Ontario government scrapped that plan and announced that the hospital would be built with public funds after all.

In 2004, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that the hospital would be privately built and operated after all.