Thursday was a great day for Ottawa’s mental health as the Queensway Carleton Hospital celebrated a decade-long dream come true with the official opening of its fully renovated and expanded Barbara Crook and Dan Greenberg Mental Health Centre.
The new and improved facility is named after the Ottawa couple whose $1-million donation launched the Hopes Rising community campaign to improve intensive and acute mental health care services at the west-end hospital.
The philanthropic pair marked a milestone by agreeing, for their first time, to lend their name to a building.
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“It’s because this cause has been so important to us,” Crook told a room full of hospital officials and staff, local politicians, business leaders, campaign volunteers and fellow donors.
The need for mental health services at QCH has been on the rise. Last year, the hospital provided care to 14,600-plus people — an increase of 26 per cent over four years ago.
“Our teams have been noting that the patients are coming in sicker and with more complex treatment needs,” said Dr. Andrew Falconer, president and CEO of Queensway Carleton Hospital.
The population in Ottawa’s west end is also rapidly expanding, outpacing the growth in the rest of the city and province, said Falconer. “Our emergency department is among the busiest in the province.”
Attendees heard how the new centre spans two storeys and is double the size of the original footprint. Along with being bright and airy, it offers a more therapeutic environment for promoting wellness and healing than the unit’s former physical layout – which had been virtually the same since the hospital first opened nearly 50 years ago, in 1976.
Improvements to inpatient services wrapped up last December. Yesterday celebrated the official opening of the new out-patient space, bringing the project to its completion. It includes areas for one-on-one appointments with social workers; two large conference rooms equipped with audio-visual equipment for peer support groups; a day treatment program; a clinic for medication administration, monitoring and support; a kitchen; and a wellness room. Plans are underway to develop a garden in the outdoor courtyard.
Attendees included Ene Schonberg, whose presence was graciously recognized. It was her late husband, former hospital CEO Tom Schonberg, who shared the vision and passion for the mental health centre expansion and renovation project.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe commended QCH for responding to growing demands. “As the needs of the community have changed, QCH has been there every step of the way, and the new mental health centre is just another example of that, another example of QCH understanding and adapting to the needs of Ottawa residents.”
The mayor paid tribute to Dan Greenberg and Barbara Crook in a heartfelt way that recognized their many “remarkable” philanthropic contributions. He also presented the husband and wife with a framed letter on behalf of Ottawa City Council, congratulating them, along with Falconer and his board of directors, including chair Atul Aggarwal; QCH Foundation president and CEO Shannon Gorman; the other donors of the Hopes Rising campaign; and their community partners. As well, the gathering included a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a gift from the hospital of a symbolic key of gratitude to Greenberg and Crook.
Greenberg and Crook’s generosity toward individuals with mental health challenges, through their support of the QCH’s renovated and expanded mental health centre, has helped “countless Ottawa residents and their families,” the mayor told the pair.
“Your advocacy has helped lift the veil around mental health, has helped to address the stigma around mental health,” Sutcliffe said. “From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of my colleagues on Ottawa city council, on behalf of the people of Ottawa, I want to thank you, really thank you, for your continued support and kindness to the people of this city.
“You really are amazing leaders, amazing citizens, and you’re an inspiration to me and my family and to so many others. Thank you, Barbara and Dan.”
The mayor did, however, have one lingering question: how did the husband and wife decide the order of their names on the mental health centre signage? “Ladies first,” replied Greenberg from the audience.
Crook was part of the Hopes Rising campaign from the beginning. She got involved after visiting and providing support to a relative being treated at QCH for a mental illness. Crook noticed that the old in-patient unit, which hadn’t been updated since the hospital first opened in 1976, was in need of a serious makeover.
She wasn’t alone in her thinking; others had expressed their concerns with the physical state of the mental health facility. The medical treatment was excellent but the surroundings were simply “meh”, said Crook of the small and dark rooms, grungy bathrooms and glass fortress of a nursing station.
She went to the QCH Foundation’s CEO at the time, Melanie Adams, who took the time to listen and investigate.
“I still remember the look of determination in her eyes when she said, ‘We have to fix this’,” recalled Crook of a grassroots campaign to ultimately raise $6 million.
“Now, if you run a business or a non-profit, you know you can’t just snap your fingers and make something like this happen,” said Crook of all the behind-the-scenes work. She expressed her gratitude to the Ontario government, which ended up providing $9 million.
The Hopes Rising campaign, which launched in 2016, saw the west-end community rally together. Sara Cinq-Mars and her construction executive husband Kevin Cinq-Mars, Ottawa lawyer Ron Prehogan, Kathy Turner and Denis Daoust were all mentioned for their roles. So were retired Ottawa Senators player Chris Phillips (now the team’s vice-president of business operations) and his wife, Erin Phillips, who were honorary co-chairs of the campaign. Organizers held a series of unforgettable fundraising soirées at Saunders Farm in Munster.
Crook made it clear that the contributions to Hopes Rising went far beyond her and her husband to include volunteers, hospital staff, board members and many donors.
She reflected back on the past decade since she and her husband first joined a group of people with a “crazy dream that we, as a caring community, could build a new, safe, welcoming, bright and nurturing mental health centre in this hospital, a place where the environment and the facilities were up to the standards of the excellent care here, a place where patients with mental health issues could find healing with dignity and respect, a place where psychiatric nurses and other medical professionals would feel inspired to do their best work, a place of hope.”
Said Crook: “This would not have happened without the vision, the determination, expertise and perseverance of so many of the people here today. You listened and you made this dream a reality.”
Crook touched on her family’s history with mental illness. When she was a kid, her father suffered a severe bout of depression and was admitted into a psychiatric hospital in Montreal, where he was successfully treated with electroconvulsive therapy. Her dad’s boss later called to say her dad shouldn’t bother coming back to work.
“He was expendable because he had a mental illness,” said Crook. “I would like to think that that’s ancient history, but we still have a way to go to overcome the stigma associated with mental illness.”
Crook said her father recovered and “remained one of the most sunny and positive people I ever encountered.” Even the bank tellers would fight over who got to serve him, she added.
“As we open this centre today, I imagine what it would have been like for my parents if my dad had been treated in a place like this in a time when a broken spirit is given the same respect as a broken bone,” said Crook. “We can’t fix the past, but … We’re moving forward together. We have given the people of Ottawa the gift of a safe and healing space where their souls can be nurtured with dignity and with hope.”
Greenberg’s deep connection to the hospital stretches back to when his late father, Minto co-founder Irving Greenberg, led the hospital’s first fundraising campaign in the 1980s. His family went on to help establish the Irving Greenberg Family Cancer Centre at QCH. As well, Greenberg chaired the hospital foundation’s $35-million ‘Care Grows West’ campaign. He is the president of the Accora Village rental community in the city’s west end.
QCH chief of staff Dr. Kathi Kovacs (affectionally known as as “Dr. Special K” by Crook) expressed her gratitude toward the families and donors that made mental health such a priority.
“I think this opening really signifies that we in Ottawa and at the Queensway Carleton Hospital make no difference between cancer patients, heart patients and patients with mental illness,” said Kovacs, a psychiatrist who joined the hospital in 1997. “This is so important for not just our patients and not just our families but for our society.”
QCH patient and family advisory council member Ava-Grace Sliwa left her audience touched by her personal story. She was among the individuals for whom the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated symptoms of her OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Even with the support of her loving family and medical professionals, she said, “I declined rapidly to a stage where I believed it would be better not to be alive than to continue to fight a battle with no end in sight.”
Sliwa ended up in the emergency department at QCH, where she spent some time as a mental health in-patient, followed by her participation in out-patient programs.
“It’s with great pride that I’m standing here tonight,” said Sliwa. “I’m thriving as a student living away from home, where my greatest challenge is attempting to cook food as well as my mom, and making time to do my laundry every week.
“I promise I’m getting better in the kitchen,” she told her mom, who was seated in the audience. “I made banana bread yesterday.”
caroline@obj.ca
