To the editor:

The Royal Victoria Hospital is housed in one of the most remarkable buildings associated with McGill, Montreal and indeed the whole of Canada. Professor Annmarie Adams has done an important service to the community in highlighting the need to ensure the preservation of these buildings if they are to be abandoned by the Royal Victoria Hospital (see November 19 McGill Reporter).

These are magnificent buildings, their setting is extraordinary, they contain elements of great artistic value, such as the entrance to the neighbouring Montreal Neurological Institute, or symbolic value, such as the bridge between neurology and general medicine. They deserve to be cherished, not to be trashed.

I would hope that the University community, instead of viewing this as a source of controversy, would see the vacating of these buildings by the Royal Victoria Hospital as an absolutely unique opportunity to take the important step of founding McGill undergraduate colleges and perhaps other forms of University housing.

If our wonderful University lacks anything in comparison with our principal Canadian rival, Toronto, or the American Ivy League universities, it is the absence of adequate student housing and, even more so, the absence of a college structure which serves such places as Toronto and Harvard so well.

Instead of seeing this event as a catastrophe, let us make it a triumph in the next century. Surely the creation of undergraduate colleges would consolidate our position as the most attractive university in Canada? It would certainly attract students from across the country and around the world, and would further increase the number of American students doing their undergraduate studies at McGill.

The buildings and their situation could not be better linked to the University. Proximity, history and strong legal ties (which up to now, I fear, have been rather seriously neglected) all militate in favour of the University taking the initiative in maintaining its ties with these remarkable buildings.

Over a century ago, Lord Strathcona, the city of Montreal, and subsequently other generous benefactors entrusted McGill and the Royal Victoria Hospital with an important interest in these buildings and this historic site.

McGill and the Royal Victoria Hospital have a responsibility to these buildings. I hope that the University and the Royal Victoria Hospital will be able to respond to this new challenge with as much foresight and idealism as has been displayed over the years by all those who have wished to make the Royal Victoria Hospital a great hospital. Surely this need not detract from the efforts being made by the McGill medical community to establish the new McGill University Health Centre?

A.L.C. de Mestral
Professor of Law