Green on Queen

Preserving and integrating green space into CAMH’s urban village has been a critical feature of the CAMH Redevelopment Project master plan for over a decade.

CAMH’s Queen Street site is fortunate to be located on property with diverse flora and fauna, but the hospital’s deep appreciation for nature extends beyond the therapeutic benefits that it offers to people recovering from mental illness: it also serves as an invitation to the surrounding community to use the site for recreation and leisure, a far cry from the days when the previous Asylum physically walled off patients from the outside world. 

At the same time, the CAMH Redevelopment Project extends the footprint of physical bricks and mortar on our site—with more space for providing care to people in need of help, more space for professionals to learn the caring skills of tomorrow and more space for game-changing research and discovery of new treatments and preventions. 

So how does CAMH balance increasing its caring capacity with environmental stewardship? The third phase of the Queen Street Redevelopment Project offers an excellent case study. 

Environmental stewardship starts with the new buildings—which opened November 2020 for patient care. 

Green and sustainable design elements include:

• Ensuring views of green spaces for all patient bedrooms (which means preserving as many mature trees on our site as possible)
• Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and products that meet or exceed Canadian Standards Association and LEED requirements
• Landscaped green roofs
• Furniture and medical furnishings that reduce the use of hazardous chemicals and compounds
• Bicycle parking and change/shower facilities that promote bicycle use and commuting
• Use of low-emitting materials, such as adhesives, sealants, paints and flooring.

But environmental stewardship doesn’t stop there. CAMH also boasts an arbour strategy to ensure the integration of healthy green spaces across the 27-acres at Queen Street.

The arbour strategy guides CAMH’s work to ensure full compliance with all City of Toronto tree protection bylaws. 

During this third phase, CAMH removed a total of 82 trees, planted a total of 153 trees and created tree protection zones for every part of the site that was not directly impacted by demolition or new construction. In keeping with City bylaws, CAMH also made a payment to the city for additional trees where space restraints prevented new planting. 

One of the most exciting developments in this phase of redevelopment is the revitalization of green space at Queen and Shaw streets featuring a brand new name, TD Commons.

TD Commons incorporates mixed-use green space, diverse trees, shrubs and plants, beautifully lit walking paths, benches, a pavilion, a children’s play zone, a wet play area and misting station, as well as an outdoor art installation.

Finally, our Queen Street site houses a state of the art, custom designed greenhouse which is dedicated to patient programming and supports two of our social enterprise partnerships: FoodShare, which operates the Sunshine Garden and the seasonal Sunshine Garden Market, and Parkdale Green Thumb Enterprises, a landscaping company which is dedicated to hiring people with lived experience. 

Nothing short of historic, the CAMH Redevelopment is changing the face of mental health and along with it, new levels of excellence for green construction projects in urban environments.