My brothers and I were all born in Willow Pavilion (1957-1960), when it was the Obstetric ward of the Vancouver General Hospital. Later, Willow became the Willow Chest Centre for Tuberculosis and in 2013, it was extensively renovated to become a six floor facility for the treatment and rehabilitation of complex mental health conditions.
To the east of Willow Pavilion is the large maintenance services facility for VGH. Older Vancouverites may recall its sky-scraping chimney. I definitely do, and I was very excited to find a photo of it in the Vancouver Archives!
Above: from L to R: four storey unidentified building, Centennial Pavilion, Willow Pavilion, facilities services with tall chimney. ( Vancouver city planning photo).
Below: Willow Pavilion today with the truncated chimney in the foreground. Perhaps it was deemed an earthquake hazard, my engineer son suggested….
The original very tall chimney is part of my formation….I have long been convinced that when I asked her, at a very young age, Mummy told me I was born by coming out of that very tall chimney!
Today, as I see the archive photo above, I wonder whether she was perhaps pointing at Willow Pavilion while driving by and saying: “That’s where you were born”. Perhaps I interpreted this to mean I came out of that chimney! She was very good at telling us amazing fairytales, while she did the ironing on weekends, or when reading to us before bedtime. However, on medical facts she was always clear and clinically accurate!
I also have in my memory that she told us a dinosaur swam out to turn on the fountain in the centre of Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park….’til this day, every time i pass Lost Lagoon, i remember our childhood fascination with that fountain and how it worked! We drove past it at least twice weekly, to visit our Granny who lived in West Vancouver.
Willow Pavilion and Centennial Pavilion ( since 2015, renamed Leon Judah Blackmore after a very generous benefactor), are still there today, in the midst of new buildings erected and old ones being demolished, as you read!
The photo above was taken two days ago, on May 14, 2020, while walking between buildings during my work shift at VGH. Towering behind Willow and Leon Blackmore ( Centennial Pav) one can see the tall Jim Pattison Pavilion, aptly called by VGH staff “The Tower” for short! All three buildings are presently filled with patient wards.
In the left foreground, the previous Health Centre for Children, later used for Psychiatric services, is being demolished after a year of abatement for asbestos. In the right foreground is Heather Pavilion.
Below are a couple more photos from back in the day….check out those cars!!
Also, back in the day, every year in December, a huge iconic Christmas tree was erected on the lawn in front of Centennial Pavilion.
(Photo from Vancouver Sun archive)
There was a Christmas carol sing-a-long in the late afternoon, early evening of a Thursday. By 5 PM, it would already be dark out, and the huge tree on the lawn glittered with colourful lights. Mum would bring us children to the sing-a-long.
I recall a thick mob of people in the lobby of Centennial where a hot chocolate table was located – the thick mob spilled outside the front doors, where a lively pianist played carols on an upright piano, surrounded by singing healthcare workers.
We children were fascinated by the pianist’s hands! It was, of course, cold damp Vancouver December weather, but she was prepared and wore such interesting gloves. Her knitted gloves came partway down her nimble fingers, leaving the distal knuckles and fingertips free to tinkle the ivories and ebonies!
Christmas season brings to mind another VGH childhood memory.
Crofton House School, “for girls”, which I attended for twelve years, along with a few other “lifers”, held an annual Christmas Carol service down at Christ Church Cathedral on a Friday afternoon in mid- December.
We girls, dressed in white, with our white-ish berets and navy blazers on, would be bussed downtown and then lined up in pairs, in grade order, in the cold grey stone basement Crypt. Then we’d make our way slowly up the divided staircase, meet up with our partners again and process down the aisles of the beautiful sanctuary, whilst singing “Once in Royal David’s City”. So begins the lovely traditional Anglican service for the Third Sunday in Advent: “Service of Lessons and Carols”. When over, we processed out to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and descended the stairways into the Crypt.
Parents and relatives attended the service. My working Mum did not, but she would pick me up afterwards…..I remember waiting for her, and I was usually the last girl left downstairs in the cold stone Crypt ( along with an unlucky teacher who would have to wait with me). I wonder as I write this why it was called the “Crypt” – are there people actually buried down there? I could not find out, but did find this historical article.
Click to access HistoryBrochureWEB.pdf
Eventually, my Mum would come rushing into the Crypt, her white labcoat visible under her raincoat: “Quick, Jenny, I’m parked illegally….” and we’d rush out to the car, hastily parked somewhere on Georgia or Burrard Street, or in the lane behind.
One year, Mum took me back to VGH to attend her Pathology Lab Christmas party after she had picked me up from the Cathedral. Here we are: Mum and I, happy to be hanging out together. Today, May 16th, is her birthday. She would be 99 years old! I still miss her, it seems even more these days…perhaps as I’m growing older and doing more wandering down memory lane.
I do want to recount one last school- age memory of a visit to VGH, which occurred when I was thirteen years old. My estrogen levels were starting to rise. I grew my hair, no more little Dutch cut! And I note a pimple on my mischievous face in this Grade 9 school photo.
School was mostly fun for me; my body, mind and spirit were developing in the company of awesome friends, many of whom are still close and dear today, and we were guided by memorable and generally dedicated and caring teachers.
It was a grey and rainy Wednesday, midweek, and we adolescent girls were bored.
During recess, we hatched a plot to sneak out to the little corner store across the street and buy candy during lunchbreak….it was true “penny” candy in those days – dry chewy strawberries, pale yellow bananas, rocket candy necklaces, double- bubble chewing gum with waxy Pud jokes inside. The purchases were put into a miniature brown paper bag. (TQ to my Crofton friends for their added memories!)
Candy orders were taken, nickels and dimes were collected and “yours truly” (and I think, with an accomplice, although who that person was seems to be eluding our memories so far), headed off down the long curved driveway….sneaking out just as the bell rang, i.e. before teachers had time to peak out windows or exit doors.
I had borrowed a friend’s raincoat.
I recall crossing 41st Avenue at Blenheim and then running west along the half- block to the little corner store at Balaclava and 41st. Somewhere along that stretch, I almost tripped as I felt something jam between my knees and then a stab of pain. I or we, kept running, and reached the corner store door… CLOSED! The old wooden door with the glass window showing the rather dimly lit interior was locked.
I, or we, made it back to school safely and undetected by teachers, to a bunch of expectant, and then disappointed friends.
When we examined my leg, we saw that a lead pencil tip had pierced my skin above my left knee and broken off inside. What? How? We explored the raincoat and felt a pencil in its hem! Further examination revealed a hole in the raincoat pocket through which the pencil must have slipped down. I had to make my way down to Bedford- Jones Hall to see the school nurse. There was no need to mention the failed candy shopping expedition; the borrowed raincoat story was explanation enough.
My mother was telephoned at work; I had been coached to memorize her VGH switchboard phone number and her local- 3238, since age five. Limited school files in those days, I guess….
In the early afternoon, my Mum came to fetch me and bring me down to VGH; we waited in a clinic room in Centennial Pavilion, where she had asked one of her Residents to meet us. This Orthopedic Surgical Resident was doing his 3 or 6 month Pathology rotation with her.
I well recall sitting on the examining table and a handsome young man entering the room and then removing the broken off pencil tip from my left leg and putting in a few sutures.
Presumably he cleansed it well and gave me local anaesthetic before proceeding with the minor surgery, incising the skin and extracting the “foreign body”. I do not recall any trauma; needles and knives have never bothered me. I always loved the various minor surgical procedures I performed as a GP in small remote towns, and I thrived in my seven years work as a GP Surgical Assistant in the Operating Rooms.
And that day, decades ago, in the clinic room, my thirteen year old emerging young woman’s gaze and heart was quite content to let her young surgeon do his work.
My Mum noticed my starry eyes, of course, and teased me for quite some time afterwards 🙂
The blue/ grey lead dye, incision and suture marks are still visible today on my 62 year old leg, usually covered modestly by below knee clothing.
The bit of pencil graphite dye in my left leg never troubled me. This past Wednesday, I took a two hour bike ride in the morning before a Zoom team meeting at 11 AM. I needed to burn off some anxiety with a good cardiac and muscle workout.
The air was heavy with impending showers, and dark grey clouds hung low, but the rain held off, apart from a few drops. I breathed in the fresh moist air and feasted on the colours of rhododendron and lilac blossoms and of the brilliant green of the verdant grass and foliage.
As I rode, I thought about my Mum, her life and work. Over the previous weekend I had perused photo albums and had read some of my Granny’s memoirs, where she wrote of Lore’s artistic ability….in her early teens Lore had designed over 500 miniature costumes. I remembered how when we kids were little, she would sketch faces in pencil on our morning boiled eggs, set in egg cups on our little wooden table and chairs in our large old kitchen. And in the evenings while she sat at our kitchen table writing up reports, she always had sketches of faces in the margins. She could draw very well!!
One heavy photo album I found this past weekend is full of high resolution electron microscope photos of the ultrastructure of brain tumours.
As I rode hard up the Arbutus Greenway bikepath, I had the sudden revelation that my mother was artistic….although an excellent diagnostician, analytical thinker and research scientist, she had an eye for the patterns of beauty in the anatomy she studied and diagnosed.
This afternoon, I looked at her publication which came out in 1984. She had given me a copy decades ago. Only today, I read the Preface for the first time ever and noted the following sentence: “Finally, a well- preserved and prepared specimen has visual esthetic value: It is a pleasure to behold.”
And today, for the first time, I skimmed through the photos, admiring their patterns and design. I found one of a benign papilloma that struck me as truly beautiful. Enjoy the detailed structures and her descriptive words below! Mum, the artist!
And so, I reflect back on the Pink Magnolia stellata, now green with leaves, as summer season approaches. The tree which continues to demonstrate the faithfulness of God seen in the seasons. And I reflect on the photos in this Diagnostic Altas, demonstrating the intricate structure of our bodies. And i reflect on our family, my parents and siblings, children and how we pass on from parents to children down through the generations, tell the stories and memories that form us and share the various appreciations of art that touch our senses. I believe those stories we tell, that art we share in various forms, enriches our relationships and perspectives in life and helps us to live with meaning and purpose, passing the good, blessing others.
Thank you, my dear Mum – although I haven’t been with you for over thirty years, I love discovering and understanding you more.
JenniEliz 