The Royal Victoria Hospital - Date unknown Phil Carpenter.

5 March 2013

What's Next for the Royal Victoria Hospital and Who Decides

Montreal Quebec - Seems like everyone has an opinion about the fate of the Royal Victoria Hospital.
 
Some of them dead wrong, at least according to one of the descendants of the railway barons who bequeathed the land on which the great grey fortress stands on the southeast slope of Mount Royal.
 
Yesterday's post, in which I invited Montrealers to share their thoughts on what should be done with the property when the McGill University Health Centre, triggered a huge response from readers. I'll be writing more on the subject later this week, but here's a quick sample to keep the conversation going.
 
"I think it should be deeded back to the family, and it would be up to them to decide what to do," said Roberta Wallace Lanthier. "As the land was gifted for a specific purpose, I don't think it's up to the city of Montreal, the RVH, or the province to consider that it is up to them to sell off as they wish."
 
"I think the family should definitely have a say," said Maureen Gallagher. "It should not be sold for condos or any other real estate, but to keep the hospital open or turned into a museum or park."
 
For Zach Braman, however, what's done is done. "The family did not donate additional money for upkeep in perpetuity so it would be unreasonable for them to assume someone would maintain the land forever," he wrote, adding that the family probably got a tax break when the gave the land away.
 
Utter nonsense, says Elspeth Angus, 83, who just happens to be the great grandniece of railway baron George Stephen, a.k.a. Lord Mount Stephen.
 
It was Stephen and his cousin Donald Smith, also known as Lord Strathcona, who donated the land which was to become the Royal Victoria Hospital, as described in this passage from the MUHC Foundation website:
 
The hospital was built at the top of what is now University Street, on the slope of Mount Royal, where it still stands today. Like McGill University itself, the site was originally in the country. The site was chosen not only for its easy accessibility to McGill students but also for the health benefits of fresh air. Designed by London architect Henry Saxon Snell in the Scottish baronial style, the hospital was intended to be a place of healing for all people, "to be for the use of the sick and ailing without distinction of race or creed." The Royal Victoria Hospital was very modern in its day and was hailed as the "finest and most perfectly equipped hospital on the great American continent."
 
Angus, who, by the way, is not related to Senator David Angus said the notion that descendants of Strathcona and Mount Stephen are angling to get the land back is "100 percent wrong," as is Braman's suggestion that the family got any kind of tax break in that long ago era before income tax.
 
Angus notes that plans for the Royal Victoria came out of concerns that the existing Montreal General, then located on edges of Old Montreal in present-day Chinatown, was too far away to serve the population boom west of Bleury Street.
 
The original idea, Angus points out, was to build on property facing the city water reservoir on what is now Pine Avenue (Yes, that reservoir.)
 
When that notion was nixed, there were fears that effluent from the hospital would seep into the water table, benefactors needed a Plan B.
 
That's when Mount Stephen and Strathcona bought a farm on Mount Royal from the Frothingham family. They ceded the land, and $1 million, to the fledgling RVH Foundation under specific conditions, that the land be used for a hospital.
 
"All that the family wants is that the spirit of the gift be maintained," said Angus.
 
How that should happen remains to be seen, although Angus expects her many cousins would kick up a fuss if they found out the hospital was being converted into condos or the like.
 
"Why should some entrepreneur make a bundle off a gift that was given for the benefit of the community? It's ridiculous."
 
Angus said the MUHC and the city will ignore the family at its peril, citing legal precedents elsewhere in Canada, Britain, Ireland, and Europe for entailed endowments.
 
Peggy Curran.

Vancouver Island
British Columbia
Canada