Bevan Village

I just spent a month visiting my dad everyday at Bevan Village, he appears to be well cared for, has made some good friends with other residents, and staff by all appearances treat him and visitors very well. Nurses are pleasant and gentle, some even going out of their way to warmly greet him on his way in or out. The programs (Remembrance Day Ceremonies, bingo, movies) are engaging and fun, the meals, although obviously 'institutional', seem ok. Friends and family are able to visit and eat with residents in a private dining area for a small cost ($8.00 I think). The young staff who manage the front door were exceptional and always welcoming, and super patient. My brief experience with staff at the reception desk was also positive, although one got a little testy about the 1st floor washroom on one occasion. The Trillium website could be a little less impersonal, the only contact options being a phone number or online form that is only focused on inquiries about their facilities, as opposed to opening it up to a broader scope of communications and complaints.

so bad that I have to read in the local newspaper aug 31 2023 that there was a man on feb 22 2022 that broke in with a knife and it took 3 hrs to get him out . I have a family member living there yet staff failed to inform all family's that the incident had happened

My father has had dementia for a few a few months now and I decided it was time to find him a home. We looked around the Vancouver area but decided to go to Abbotsford and Bevan Village. I have been so pleased with the staff and service at Bevan Village. It's great knowing my father is in good hands.

On January 1, 1996, I received a phone call from a sobbing nurse that my father had fallen out of the second floor of Bevan Lodge. He had been laying on the pavement in the freezing rain for an undetermined length of time. This excellent nurse held his hand as he was taken to the ambulance and the Abbotsford Hospital. Afflicted with Alzheimer's, he had been at Bevan Lodge for nine days. A decorated Allied veteran, retired university of Victoria professor, researcher, father and grandfather, he had tried to escape to go home. Although he was wearing a monitor--of which much was made during the initial interviews--it did not work on the second floor. An elderly lady informed me (when I went to retrieve my father's few possessions) that they did not have enough staff on at the time. Nurses were overwhelmed with administering meds and food. Management had told my family not to visit Papa during the Christmas hiatus because he "needed time to adjust." We did not visit and we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. Never have anyone block you from your loved one. They are taking care of their own needs--not yours. Alzheimer's is enough of a brutal emotional minefield for family without these kind of high handed, self-serving rules. A few days after my father fell out of the window of Bevan Lodge, I received an invoice for his care. No apology was ever forthcoming. The day after his fall, my mother, brother and I visited him in Abbotsford Hospital. In an increasingly rare moment of clarity, he looked at us with his penetrating gaze and the old intelligence came through briefly. Rarely vulnerable, Papa said, "without your family you are nothing." Twenty years later, it still seems like a travesty of justice that our father's life should end this way in what was a long, halting and agonizing journey towards death. He was buffeted around through the administration of the B.C. Health system and died in Chilliwack on February 19, 1998. When I would visit him in Abbotsford Hospital, prior to his permanent placement in Chilliwack, he would invariably be tied to the hospital railing. The nurses said he was trying to move all the time in his wheel chair. They said that was the only way to contain him. It is my fervent hope that Bevan Lodge has changed all of their management practises since January 1, 1996 and the subsequent months. Do not place your loved one in care unless you have at least ten references from independent sources. Visit as often as you can because while Alzheimer's is a horrific disease and your loved one will cease to know you--you will mercifully have all your cognitive skills and you will know them. You will feel numb and sick of heart. After a while you will feel like you are impersonating a human being but in the years ahead when some of the pain eases, you will know for certain that you occupied the higher moral ground--always a difficult terrain.

The staff at the Bevan Village are truly impeccable. They truly go above and beyond for their patients. I know that my loved ones will always be cared for.