Throughout its history, the Riverview Lands have adapted to economic, philosophical and social changes both locally and provincially. This theme addresses the ways in which the Lands have changed over time due to changing circumstances: building uses have adjusted to changes in treatment, cottages have changed from residences to administration offices, road networks have been modified and non-hospital uses have been introduced.
In addition to the physical adaptation of the Lands, this theme encompasses the adaptability of people to changes on the site, beginning with the First Nations and continuing through hospital staff and patients who adapted to changing treatments and large-scale events.
If you feel that the idea of the adaptability of the Riverview Lands is important, please tell us why.
What places, features and stories particularly illustrate the adaptable nature of the Lands, and why?
Do you have any comments on this theme?
The Riverview lands haven’t adapted well to changing needs within the psychiatric community and the larger community. This is its problem. Its founders had no such problems with vision and solutions for the site. Many caring citizens from the surrounding communities and throughout B.C. have many good, healthy, viable ideas for adapting the place to our times. It’s the institutional caregivers and caretakers who show, collectively, the most thick-headedness about what the place was, is, and ought to be. Under their watch, abandonment, decline, and decay are the best they’ve come up with. How depressing!
We need the return of visionaries to the helm of this treasure. It all starts with embracing the whole site, ensuring it stays intact in perpetuity, then working out how to adapt every part of its ecosystems, structures, and history into a vibrant showcase of yesteryear, today, and tomorrow.