THE 'RIVERVIEW UNIVERSITY OF LIFE' PROJECT

Operation Phoenix was alerted recently to an idea that's being
floated to turn the Riverview mental hospital in Coquitlam into
a therapeutic community for the treatment of drug addiction and
mental illness.

The idea is to create the Riverview University of Life, a place where
lives encumbered by one or both of these conditions would be turned
around by rebuilding them carefully over two or three years in a
beautiful, natural, community setting. The chief visionary for the
project is Tui Hill, a Downtown Eastside health-care worker.

"I've been coming up to Vancouver since 1967," Hill wrote to Operation
Phoenix, "and every year, regardless of the money poured into the
Downtown Eastside, it's gotten uglier, dirtier, sicker and more
tragic. While I love the vibrancy and creativity of the DTES and my
best friends live and work there, it is a blight on Vancouver's
much-vaunted reputation of being among the top 10 best cities in the
world, and a crying shame to all Canadians."

We asked Hill to write about her vision for the Riverview University
of Life.