Architectural renderings of the new Anishnawbe Health Toronto and ceremonial grounds. Due to the nature of the project development process, design may be modified.
Credit: Stantec
Today, our Facilities need more than a Bandage Solution
As needed programs and services grew, additional sites at two Victorian-era residential buildings at Gerrard Street East and Sherbourne Street, and then Vaughan Road and St. Clair Avenue West were leased. The sites were not built for Health care or Traditional Healing and ceremony but Anishnawbe Health has adapted the sites as much as possible, including opening Toronto’s first sweat lodge facility in a public facility over 17 years ago. Anishnawbe Health ‘made do’ and adapted its buildings, but for clients, travelling between centres for care is an added burden on this vulnerable population and an added barrier to health.
Today, these facilities are extremely outdated and overcrowded, and present privacy, confidentiality and infection control risks to clients and staff. These issues make it extremely challenging to meet current standards for ambulatory healthcare facilities and compromise Anishnawbe Health Toronto’s capacity to deliver critical programs and services. Together, we can build a new Home for Anishnawbe Health Toronto.
Together, we can build a new Home for Anishnawbe Health Toronto
Anishnawbe Health Toronto has purchased, for a nominal fee, 0.7 acres of land in the West Don lands (Block 10) from The Province of Ontario which will be the site of the new Indigenous Health Centre.
This prominent site was part of the 2015 PanAm/ParaPanAm Games Athletes’ Village, and is adjacent to the thriving Distillery District, the new Cherry Streetcar line and near the popular Corktown Common. The new Anishnawbe Health Toronto building will be the first project on the site of a new Indigenous Community Hub for the city at this location.
Anishnawbe Health Foundation is mounting a campaign to fund the building and to support programs at the new Centre.
Highlights of the new facility:
- Purpose-built facility with connection to land, light and ceremony
- Surrounded by First Peoples landscape including indigenous plants, healing gardens and therapeutic spaces
- Sweat lodge, ceremonial grounds and related facilities at the heart of the facility
- Additional group meeting and counselling space to support group-based programs and sharing circles that are central to Indigenous traditions and programs
- Dedicated space for a teaching kitchen, physiotherapy and health promotion will allow for hands-on healthy cooking demonstrations and space for exercise programs
- A new child assessment facility and play therapy facility to assess and treat cognitive and neurodevelopment problems as part of a new Child, Family and Youth Unit
- Space for expanded services including an Indigenous Palliative Care service and a Program for Two Spirit, LGBTQ Clients