Book Review: The Suicide Magnet—Inside the Battle to Erect a Safety Barrier on Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct

The Suicide Magnet: Inside the Battle to Erect a Safety Barrier on Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct
By Paul McLaughlin (Dundurn Press, 2023)

In 2003, the Luminous Veil—a suicide barrier designed by Dereck Revington Studio along Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct—opened. Revington’s full vision did not come to completion until a full 12 years later, when the steel strings were finally illuminated with a ribbon of 35,000 LEDs. As it turns out, the journey to erect the barrier in the first place was also long and hard-fought.

The push for erecting a permanent safety barrier for the Bloor Viaduct started with a series of widely reported suicides in the mid-1990s, which brought light to the fact that the bridge had the second-highest rate of suicides in North America, after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. MacLaughlin recounts the stories of several of the 400 people who died of suicide from this spot, the trauma and mental illness that led to their deaths, and their choice of the Viaduct as their jumping place. As the families of the deceased, medical specialists, and advocates learned about how a suicide barrier might prevent future deaths, their efforts became concentrated around two men: retired salesman Al Birney and journalism student Michael McCamus. Together, Birney and McCamus spent close to five years lobbying Toronto’s City Hall to create a safety barrier on the bridge.

After laborious discussions and meetings led by the two men, City Council greenlit a design competition for the barrier. The competition was ultimately won by Revington, working with two students at the time, Geoffrey Thün and Jonathan Tyrrell. The project overcame a crucial challenge with the help of architect Ellis Kirkland, who led a private fundraising campaign when bidding came in $4 million above the original budget. (The initiative ultimately faltered, and the City absorbed the extra costs for the barrier’s construction.) Funding for the illumination of the Veil materialized a decade later, with the impetus of Toronto’s hosting of the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games.

McLaughlin’s chronicle is a detailed telling not only of a suicide barrier, but of Toronto’s complex politics, and the people who battled through its challenges to get the Luminous Veil built and illuminated. It is, as well, a plea to recognize the struggles associated with mental illness, including among friends and family, and for design and architecture’s role in creating compassionate cities where all may live and thrive.

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