Riverview Hospital is a daunting place. The buildings are gothic. The bars on the windows reflect an era of mental health care when locked doors were supposed to protect patients. Visitors to Riverview Hospital now can only wonder what went on there because the buildings are closed and the last patients were transferred out to other facilities just this summer. But one family says Riverview was very much a part of their lives. With the hospital closing, they agreed to talk to The Tri-City News to honour their mom and dad, who spent so much time there.
Cecil Smith was as genial a man as you could find. At Riverview Hospital, where 'Smitty' was a regular visitor, he was popular among patients, who trailed him as if he were the Pied Piper and the nurses enjoyed his pleasant smile. They would wish him well as he walked out of the hospital, with his wife in tow and a bag of laundry in his arms.
Smitty was an electrician, and his wife, Anne a pretty woman with thick, brown hair, who was also a talented seamstress and knitter. When they married in 1939, they had no idea what life had in store for them. For three years, they were happy.
But in 1942, when Anne gave birth to their first daughter, Carolynn, the clouds descended on the young wife and mother.
For a while, it seemed they would never lift.
PATIO TALK
The Smith sisters are an attractive group of women whose distinct characters shine after only a few minutes of conversation.
There's Carolynn, the oldest and possibly the most practical one; Elaine, the middle child, emotional and thoughtful; and Diane, whose vivaciousness hides a steely strength and whose nicely decorated Coquitlam home suggests an artistic inclination.
They're meeting in Diane's backyard to chat and compare memories of their mother's mental illness and how they coped. They are full of stories, not all of them happy ones, but they say their parents' strong family values - hard work, discipline and mutual support - helped them get through those tumultuous years.
Their mother, Anne, battled bipolar disorder, with periods of mania, alternating with depression, but she was also a good mother, entirely devoted, and when she couldn't get out of bed, would braid her daughters' hair at her bedside.
Their dad, Smitty, adored Anne and during the early years of the girls' childhood in Collingwood in Vancouver, you wouldn't have known there was mental illness in the family.
"She was a housewife," Diane recalls, "like every other mother on the street."
RIVERVIEW MEMORIES
Carolynn was about four years old when she first visited her mother at Riverview and was surprised to see all the locks. "'Why is everything locked?' I wondered, that was the perception of a four year old,'" she says.
First at Crease Clinic and later at East Lawn, Anne became a regular patient at Riverview and, as electric shock treatments destroyed her short-term memory and drugs diminished what had been a sharp mind, the place became as much her home as the house in Collingwood.
The girls remember their mom as a strong character who was careful about her appearance and kept regular appointments with her hairdresser. But it was Smitty who was the rock along with the assorted friends and family members who gave the girls' life a semblance of order.
Beginning in 1942, when Anne had her first breakdown, Smitty became her primary caregiver and her pillar of strength. Money was tight but despite not having a car, Smitty managed to make regular trips to the Coquitlam hospital.
To this day, the girls don't know how he managed.
"It's a mystery," Carolynn says.
After a six-month stay at Riverview, Anne returned home and had two more daughters over six years, then kept it together for another 15 years until a hormonal imbalance following a hysterectomy sent her spiralling downward.
LIFE AT RIVERVIEW
Riverview Hospital has achieved iconic status among those who wish to see it preserved. It was considered a leading-edge hospital where psychiatric nurses learned skills and new therapies were developed.
Smitty visited three or four times each week, even though he still had to get Diane through high school and fulfill his work obligations. When he retired, looking after Anne at Riverview became a major focus of his life. He would drive her to visit her grandkids and make sure she attended special occasions.
For the Smith sisters, Riverview was the place they went to visit their mom and the place they took their kids to see their grandma. It was a duty but not always a chore.
The sisters remember having tea with their mom at Penn Hall and attending dances on Friday nights.
"My mother would say, if someone asks you to dance, be polite and dance with them," said Diane.
Elaine remembers the male patients asking her how long she'd been at Riverview.
"I would say, 'I'm a visitor' and they would say, 'I'm a visitor, too.'"
They advocated for her well-being, communicated with doctors and made sure she was well-looked after. It was not always easy but the experience has rubbed them as smooth as stones in a rushing stream.
"She had mental illness and it affected everyone in the family," Diane now says.
There is no way to capture all the moments in a life time, big or small, but one anecdote hints at how the Smith family managed all those years.
Mom and dad are sitting at the kitchen table and the sisters are fussing over corsages and neckties. It's their 50th wedding anniversary and 40 guests are about to arrive at Diane's Coquitlam home.
With a loving, last-minute gesture, Smitty applies adhesive to his wife's dentures and sticks them in her mouth.
"What would you do without me?" he says. "What would you do without me?" Anne retorts while adjusting her teeth.
POST MORTEM
The daughters tell a story:
Smitty steers his car off of Lougheed Highway onto Holly Drive towards Riverview hospital. Much has changed in the years since his Anne first became a patient in the early 1940s. There are fewer patients and fewer staff. It's not quite a ghost town, but almost.
Although he has no errand to keep since his wife passed away, he's there to visit patients and has brought cigarettes as a gift.
His daughters don't understand why he returns now that his burden has been lifted.
Smitty has only this to say: "I don't know why," he says, giving them a smile. "My car just automatically goes out there."
Cecil 'Smitty' Smith passed away in 2002, roughly a decade after Anne died in a Burnaby nursing home. The extended family remembers them fondly.
