Nearly 50 years of Richmond Hospital
Imagine not having a hospital when you need it.
Richmond Hospital is something we often take for granted, but, more than 50 years ago, patients requiring hospital care had to travel to Vancouver or New Westminster to get it. Richmond’s doctors, too, were also spending a lot of time driving back and forth between their practice in Richmond and hospitals in Vancouver or elsewhere.
The situation wasn’t sustainable, given Richmond, at the time, was undergoing a population boom as young families moved here in droves, attracted by new houses and cheap land prices.
A vision for the future
In 1953, a group of community leaders formed the Richmond Hospital Society in order to get Richmond a hospital. It took 13 years of hard work, small triumphs, setbacks and near-misses, but thanks to the hard work of community leaders, Richmond finally got its own state-of-the-art hospital in 1966.
A very different place
The Richmond of 1966 was a much different community than it is now. Other than houses located along the south side of Westminster Highway, the hospital was surrounded by fields and vacant lots. Even cows grazed close by.
At a six-storey height, the new hospital was by far the tallest building in Richmond.
There were no high rises, and the first big apartment development –the three-storey wood-frames cluster situated along Minoru Boulevard were still five years away. But Minoru Park had an outdoor pool, a sports pavilion (recently demolished) and an ice arena that sometimes hosted rock concerts featuring the likes of Jefferson Airplane.
Richmond Square, Richmond’s first big mall, had just opened. It’s where the south end of Richmond Centre is situated now.The north end of the mall — the portion that houses the Bay — didn’t exist yet. The mid-1960s were a time when Lansdowne Park was a race track, and Aberdeen Centre was a lone house in a grassy thicket.
Richmond did have a Chinese restaurant, the Bamboo Grove on No. 3 Road. It served chop suey. It’s still there, but now features deluxe signature items such as pork stomach soup with ginkgo, which you can enjoy with a $300 bottle of Bordeaux.
There were no Arthur Laing or Knight Street bridges.There was only the Fraser Street Bridge; a swing bridge located at the north end of No. 5 Road into which a barge crashed in 1966.
Vancouver International Airport was about to open a new terminal in the mid-1960s, allowing super-jets to land in Vancouver. It served 1.9 million passengers in 1968. Today, nearly 20 million passengers come through YVR annually.
Richmond’s new reality
The population of Richmond was about 50,000 when Richmond Hospital opened. Nowadays, there are more than 50,000 people in the City Centre neighbourhood alone.
Those fields filled with cows now sprout high-rise condominiums as Richmond’s central core has become a dense, urban neighbourhood. Richmond’s current population, estimated at 213,000 residents, is growing quickly. There will likely be as many as 230,000 people in Richmond by 2021.
Some things haven’t changed
Although Richmond has grown into a busy and vibrant city over the past 50 years, Richmond Hospital’s original North Tower has not changed much at all. The tower does not meet present day seismic standards and needs to be replaced. It is obsolete and antiquated for this rapidly growing urban centre.
According to BC Stats, Richmond has the fastest growing seniors population in BC, projected to increase by 121 per cent by 2030. This growth is putting even more pressure on the hospital because the older we get, the more we need health care.
We need your help
For 50 years, the top-notch staff at Richmond Hospital have provided exceptional medical and surgical care to residents. You can continue to support them by donating to our current surgical campaign that is under way to replace equipment that’s nearing the end of its lifespan.
We are also seeking community voices to champion funding and construction of a new acute care tower to replace the 50-year-old original tower. We need everyone, including the support of residents and advocacy of our Richmond leaders to secure a commitment from our provincial government to invest now in a new tower for Richmond Hospital.