Douglas Mental Health University Institute

This psychiatric center for the English-speaking population was founded in 1881 as the Protestant Hospital for the Insane. It was built on 110 acres of farmland in the southern community of Verdun next to the St Lawrence River. Construction of its first pavilion, named after its founder Alfred Perry, was completed in 1890. A number of other buildings were built over the following 20 years as the patient population increased (to 1200 individuals by 1936), including the Lehmann, Burgess, Reed, and Newman Pavilions. More Pavilions were added in the 1960s; all were eventually connected by an extensive underground tunnel network, The hospital has changed name several times, to the Verdun Protestant Hospital (1924), the Douglas Hospital (after the philanthropist James Douglas, 1965) and the current Douglas Mental Health University Institute (2006).