Toronto Hopes Bridge
Barrier Will Curb Suicides
Excerpt By Cameron French, Reuters Health

TORONTO (Reuters) - On a wintry evening, the Prince Edward Viaduct can seem a desolate place despite six lanes of roaring road traffic and subways that rumble along the underside of the massive bridge on Toronto's East Side.

Drivers jockey for position on the nearby Don Valley Parkway, most of them unaware they have passed under a bridge considered North America's second-most popular suicide spot.

Over its 84 years, the bridge has stood as the city has blossomed from a provincial trading hub to become Canada's financial and cultural center. During that time, the Prince Edward Viaduct has also watched as some 480 desperate souls have ended their lives by throwing themselves off it.

Now the viaduct is being fitted with a barrier of rods and girders that designers hope will deter others from adding to the death toll.

With a reported 17 deaths a year, the bridge attracts more suicides than Niagara Falls and trails only San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, which averages 20 suicides a year, as North America's second-most popular public suicide site, according to a 1997 report by David Gunnell of the University of Bristol in England.

"So many souls spent the last moment of their lives at that location," said Al Birney, who has led the campaign for the construction of the barrier.

"To the families of the mentally ill, it represented an awful lot of sorrow and heartache and worry and death."

A volunteer with the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario, Birney waded through five years of municipal red tape, wrote letters and endured numerous city council debates to get construction started in June on the so-called "luminous veil."

Fashioned from more than 10,000 steel rods fastened to two rows of steel support beams, the design aims to give an unobstructed view of the valley while also making suicide jumps impossible. Construction is due to end later this month.

Workers assembling the structure have had plenty of reminders of the veil's grim purpose; several people have jumped from the bridge during construction.

While there is no security force assigned specifically to the structure, police patrol the bridge regularly. In addition, pay phones have been installed on each side of the street at both ends of the bridge, alongside a sign with a number for a 24-hour suicide hotline.

Critics have argued that those intent on committing suicide will simply find another bridge, such as the nearby Leaside Viaduct, which also spans the Don Valley.

A recent letter to the editor of the Toronto Star newspaper suggested the barrier would be effective only if similar restrictions were erected on every other major bridge in the city.

But supporters of the barrier say the viaduct is more than just another bridge, and its prominent location and grim history has given it a perverse kind of cachet.

Built during World War I and named in commemoration of the Prince of Wales's 1919 visit to Toronto, the construction of the bridge was seen as a crucial step in the coming-of-age of a nascent metropolis.

"These places, these magnets tend to attract people who are looking for kind of a romanticized way to kill themselves," said Michael McCamus, a former journalism student who has been Birney's right-hand man in the campaign.

The pair consulted experts and literature written on other "suicide magnets" such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia and the Clifton suspension bridge in the English city of Bristol.

They dusted off a 20-year-old study by former University of California at Berkeley psychologist Richard H. Seiden that found that of 515 people restrained from jumping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971, 94 percent were still alive a median of 25 years later.

Seiden also found that the Golden Gate drew more than five times as many suicides as the nearby Oakland Bay Bridge, which is of similar height and draws from the same population base.

"The bridge is a magnet (for jumpers). It's got the reputation," said Birney.

Critics have also railed against the cost of the project, which has ballooned to nearly C$5.5 million ($3.7 million) from an initially expected C$2.5 million ($1.7 million).

But observers say the cost pales in comparison to the costs not only of autopsies and police investigations for those who die, but also of surgery and counseling for those who survive.

Supporters estimate the minimum costs for survivors are C$100,000 ($68,000) for initial surgery, while the number grows when the expense of lifelong mobility aids and other social supports are factored in.

"The questions are about cost, of course. But what's the cost of a human life?" asks Mary Doucette, whose son Ray jumped to his death from the bridge in 1997.

Some worry that the barrier alters irreparably the view of and from what is one of Toronto's most prominent architectural treasures. But barrier supporters are quick to point out the steps taken to find a style that wouldn't be an eyesore.

The city held a competition for designs, eventually settling on a plan by Derek Revington, an architecture professor at the University of Waterloo. The design won quick approval from some circles, winning a 1999 Canadian Architect Magazine Award of Excellence, and the veil has now won praise as a piece of public art.

For the many who have lost friends and relatives beneath the viaduct, however, awards and citations will always be secondary to knowing that suicides there may end.

"I have a different feeling altogether now. It'll always be sad for us, losing Ray, but I have to look at the bright side that it is going to save lives on that bridge," said Doucette.

Reference Source 89

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