Bruce McKean sounds like a lovely, humble, well-meaning man.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mystery-camh-donor-mental-health/

His latest $100 MIL will at least FINALLY result in a new building for the longest suffering patients detained at CAMH, those found unfit or NCR who were the only patients left enduring the 70s brutalist darkness in the only such structures left – the two forensic towers. The “urban village” started 20 years ago and all the CEOs and VPs and lawyers got their new offices almost right away. Geriatric psychiatry, substance use, children and adolescents, and civilly detained Mental Health Act patients followed next.

Today, after two decades, all the white squirrels are gone, the 200 year old trees all dead, and a concrete jungle with car traffic and a few young trees, but newer builds, has replaced the facility that was there since the mid 1800s, kept apart from the rest of the city behind the brick wall those living in the “lunatic asylum” had built with their hard labour masquerading as treatment.

It’s at least good that this good man’s money is finally going to be used to give criminal justice involved persons living with mental health issues a decent building to live in. But it is profoundly sad that CAMH left them behind this long, waiting for this private money 20 years later, to start giving them modern facilities that everyone deserves and everyone else got before them.

Also, with $200 MIL to spare, Mr. McKean had it within his power to fix the crisis of lack of community housing for forensic patients. I wonder if he knows that there are NCR and unfit accused languishing in CAMH for a decade at a time designated ALC (Alternative Level of Care) patients, meaning they don’t have to be there at all – but supportive or supervised housing simply does not exist for them. I wonder if Mr. McKean knows that dedicated social workers on each unit, rec therapists, music and art therapy, and other supports that were once available for these clients have all been removed. I wonder if he knows that “resource limitations” have meant CAMH charges money for their own outpatients’ use of their “LOVE BUS” to go on day trips when they live in supervised housing in the community. I wonder if he knows how acute the need is for this kind of money to go to patient care and toward supporting discharge from CAMH.

We wrote him an Open letter in 2018, but he didn’t respond.

Maybe he’ll see this now.

It costs $1400 a day to house forensic clients in brutal conditions right now. It would cost not much more than that to house them in supported care for a month.

I hope Mr. McKean puts his next $200 MIL toward supportive housing for the same clients or at least directly to client care – I have to wonder whether the CAMH really didn’t have the money it needed to complete the “urban village” renovations. Or whether perhaps they had simply not prioritized the client population that came in through criminal justice. Either way, they waited for this man’s generosity before they turned their mind to caring for the most vulnerable.

Good he came by and was moved.

Hate to think what would have become of my clients if he hadn’t happened to care about them.