Timeline Slider

The first class of a diploma program for psychiatric nursing at Essondale, BC. 

Essondale reaches its peak population of 4,630 patients. Pennington Hall opens, providing recreational services to patients. Patients are house in dorms with little privacy which is a practice that carried on for decades.

New Westminster's Public (now called Provincial) Hospital for the Insane is renamed Woodlands School. Draft legislation is initiated which results in the proclamation on April 13, 1951, of the Psychiatric Nurses Act of British Columbia and the founding of the Psychiatric Nurses Association of B.C. (PNABC).

Crease Clinic of Psychological Medicine opens in the newly constructed second half of the building. A Veterans' Unit known as Riverside building opens on the Colony Farm grounds. Dr. Crease, director of Mental Hygiene for the province, retires.

1947 A small group of graduate psychiatric nurses meet to discuss and plan the formation of a professional organization which was registered under the Societies Act in September 1947 as the B.C. Psychiatric Nurses Association. Their objects were: to promote, improve and maintain an enlightened and progressive standard of psychiatric nursing and to develop an active public interest in the treatment and care of the mentally ill. to work in… Read More »1947

The first female physician is hired at Essondale but the hospital itself remains gender-segregated until the early 1960s.

Psychiatric Treatment is expanded to include Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) pharmacology (sulfa drugs) and psychosurgery. Complaints emerge that B.C.'s mental health facilities are overcrowded.

B.C.'s Mental Hospital Act is amended, deleting all references to "lunatic" and "insane". The first male psychiatric nursing students graduate from the school of nursing.

The Essondale Home for the Aged, later known as Valleyview, is opened in what was formerly the Boys' Industrial School (built in 1920).

The Veterans' Unit, later known as Crease Clinic, opens at Essondale.