History
The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) first opened in 1886 as a nine-bed tent, its primary use to treat railway workers. On June 13, 1886, a fire destroyed the tent hospital and by July, a new, one-storey building was built. In September, the City of Vancouver took over the facility, which became the City Hospital. In 1888, located at the southern edge of the original Gastown settlement, a 35-bed hospital opened, as the tent infirmary becomes too small. The upstairs ward was for female patients, the downstairs ward for males. In 1899, the Vancouver City Hospital Training School for Nurses was opened. In 1902, British Columbia provincial legislature transferred control from the city's board of health to a board of 15 directors. Vancouver City Hospital was renamed to Vancouver General Hospital. In 1906, in Fairview Ridge, overlooking False Creek, a new building, the Heather Pavilion, began housing staff and patients. The University of British Columbia Medical School opened clinical facilities at VGH in 1950.
In 1959, VGH opened the "Centennial Pavilion" (named in commemoration of the centennial of the founding of British Columbia as a British Crown colony, in 1858), which at the time was the largest part of the VGH facilities.
In the 1960s, VGH build Canada's first intensive care nursery, equipped with the first effective apparatus used for natural breathing in infants with respiratory failure.
In 1996, VGH opened the first three floors of its newly constructed Laurel Pavilion. In 2000, the Laurel Pavilion was renamed to the Jim Pattison Pavilion and construction of the final 12 floors began in 2001. The Jim Pattison Pavilion opened in 2003.
In 2004, the ground-breaking for new Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre began. This new building, adjacent to the Jim Pattison Pavilion, opened in August 2006 to provide acute day care services in a variety of areas.
The Blusson Spinal Cord Centre, the world’s largest, most advanced and most comprehensive facility devoted to spinal cord injury research and patient care was opened in November 2008. The six-storey, $45-million centre is home to ICORD (International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries), the Rick Hansen Institute and the Brenda and Davide McLean Integrated Spine Clinic and is a partnership of the University of British Columbia, the Rick Hansen Foundation, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, and the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation.
Ground was broken September 2009 for the new Robert H.N. Ho Research Centre. The seven-storey, 69,350 sq ft (6,443 m2) facility will house three of VGH’s key research programs: the Vancouver Prostate Centre at VGH; the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility; and the Ovarian Cancer Research Initiative.
Read more about this topic: Vancouver General Hospital
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“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)