‘This is a family’: Memorial service planned for unhoused Montrealers

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When authorities finally dismantled an encampment underneath the Ville-Marie Expressway last summer, David Chapman warned of what it would mean for those ordered to move out.

A list of available resources was given to the few who remained under the overpass by then. But to Chapman’s knowledge, no one went to any of the listed shelters that night.

They instead fanned out across the city, further pushed to the margins in search of more secluded corners. A year later, at least two of them have died  —  including one man, Matthew, who overdosed alone in a métro station bathroom.

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“We can say we told you so, but that doesn’t fix the problem,” said Chapman, executive director of the Resilience Montreal day centre. “There are real implications to this.”

The two people are among the more than 30 unhoused men and women the day centre will be honouring during a memorial service in Cabot Square on Wednesday at 1 p.m.

Hosted with the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, the event aims to remember those who have died and draw attention to the homelessness crisis in Montreal, which continues to claim lives at an alarming rate.

At the centre on Tuesday, Chapman was putting the finishing touches on a collection of black-and-white pictures of each of the deceased. Clients stopped in front of the photos displayed on a wall, pointing to faces they remembered or asking what happened to them.

The idea for the memorial has been in the works for some time, Chapman said. Similar events used to be held each year, but came to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roughly half of those being remembered are Indigenous women, and many of the dead succumbed to accidental overdoses. The oldest death dates back to 2021; there are three from the last month alone.

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“It’s very difficult, and it’s very important to me that we do this,” said Maggie Chittspattio, the centre’s lead intervention worker.

Chittspattio said preparing for the event has driven home just how many people have died in recent years, noting the number kept “going up and up and up.”

She hopes the memorial can help bring people together, let them share their memories of the deceased and mourn their losses.

“It means a lot for them to be remembered, from the community and from us,” she said. “To them and to me, this is a family. And this was home for them.”

Asked what he feels is contributing to the homelessness crisis and death rate, Chapman, who has been involved in helping the city’s unhoused population for years, said there are “multiplying factors” accentuating the problem.

They include the scale of the housing crisis, a more dangerous drug supply on the streets with the rise of fentanyl use, and a shortage of emergency resources for the city’s most vulnerable to turn to.

Chapman also questioned how many more deaths it will take before governments  —  and the public at large  —  realize addressing the homelessness crisis should be a top priority.

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“It’s extremely frustrating because, it’s sad to say, it’s not just a government problem, it’s also a public problem,” he said. “The government doesn’t want to spend any money on it because the public doesn’t believe it’s worth it. … It’s a terrible thing.”

Looking at the photos of the deceased on the wall, Chapman was overwhelmed by the sheer number of deaths and tragic circumstances of each individual case.

There was the woman who, after years on the streets, died of heart failure just after securing an apartment of her own. The young Vietnamese man who was liked by everyone at the centre but whose family disowned him in death.

Or the Indigenous women who died of health conditions that could have been addressed earlier, if not for the years of negative experiences that caused them to fear hospitals in the first place.

Pointing to the photo of the man who died of an overdose after the Ville-Marie encampment was cleared out, Chapman returned to the idea of dismantling encampments and the need for a better approach to the homelessness issue.

He doubts any of the people behind “the decisions that led to some of these deaths” will be at the memorial, he added.

“They’re not the ones that have to face these realities on the ground.”

jfeith@postmedia.com

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