UBC hospice fight heats up

Residents at a UBC high-rise are offended by a university staff recommendation to find them other homes elsewhere if they can’t live with a hospice next door.

They claimed that the measure, which will be discussed by the UBC board of governors’ property-and-planning committee at a meeting on Thursday (June 2), smacks of intolerance.

A staff report included in the June 8 agenda of the board of governors recommends approval of the proposed 15-bed hospice at the northeast corner of West Mall and Stadium Road.

“UBC is also our community, our campus,” Keri Zhang told the Georgia Straight during a weekend gathering of residents—mostly of Chinese origin—of the Promontory, an 18-storey condo tower with ocean views.

The meeting was held at a fifth-floor suite that overlooks the neighbouring lot where the $10 million, one-storey hospice will be put up by the Order of St. John and UBC’s faculty of medicine.

“The simple meaning for us is: ”˜This project is going ahead. If you don’t like it, get out!’ ” Zhang said.

UBC spokesperson Scott Macrae declined to speak at length about the next steps that will be taken by the university regarding the proposed palliative-care facility that has divided the local community.

“What that’s saying is just offering people an option,” Macrae told the Straight in a phone interview about the suggestion to help Promontory residents get new housing.

At a February 8, 2011, meeting, the University Neighbourhood Association passed a motion urging UBC to consider another location for the St. John Hospice.

However, UBC campus residents like former senator Pat Carney blasted the association for doing so. “It is offensive to suggest that the proposed hospice should be relocated because of the belief systems of newcomers to our country, with suggestions of evil spirits wafting through open windows and fear of dying,” Carney wrote the UNA.

Jie Wu, a mother of two who hosted the Promontory residents meeting, was very emotional about the idea of having to deal with the daily sight of people waiting for their final days.

“If you were in my shoes and every day you look out of your window and see a hospice, how would you feel?” Wu asked, speaking through a translator.

Real-estate developer Mike Cunning knows what it’s like to have a hospice around. He lives on the street where the North Shore Hospice opened its doors in 2010.

The North Vancouver resident isn’t bothered about living with dying people nearby, but he’s not happy with impacts like increased vehicular traffic in the neighbourhood. “I did an anthropology degree at UBC, so I can understand, sympathize with the cultural concerns,” Cunning told the Straight by phone about his opinion on the opposition to the UBC hospice. “On our street, there were people that were bothered by the use [of a hospice], and they moved. And that’s certainly always an option that somebody has. However”¦where else would it go?”

David Choi, national executive chair of the National Congress of Chinese Canadians, believes that it is “wrong” for the university to suggest that residents should move along if they can’t put up with a hospice.

“They’re already here,” Choi told the Straight at the residents’ meeting. “It’s the same as saying in sophisticated language to ”˜put up or ship out’. It’s not as if UBC doesn’t have any choices.”

A UNA panel report recalled that a few years ago, UBC backed down from putting up a hospice at the intersection of South West Marine Drive and University Boulevard because of opposition from students and members of the Pacific Spirit Park Society and the Wreck Beach Society.

According to Choi, UBC has looked at a total of 15 sites for a hospice. The big question, according to him, is why the university seems to be inflexible this time about the West Mall location when the opposition is mostly coming from new Canadians from China.