Rev. Clarence Li of the Sunshine Coast’s only homeless shelter is mourning the loss of a regular shelter user who was found dead outside a Gibsons business in the early morning of Nov. 14.
The body of the homeless 56-year-old Native man was found around 7 a.m. on a bench in the 800 block of Gibsons Way. The homeless shelter in Sechelt has not opened yet for the season.
“He was very dear to many of us here and we are grieving for his death. May he rest in peace now,” Li said, noting this is the second death among shelter clients that he’s heard of this year.
Overnight between Friday, Nov. 13 and Saturday, Nov. 14 when the homeless man died, the temperature reached a low of six degrees Celsius and winds were light, according to Environment Canada.
It is unclear at this time if weather conditions were related to the man’s death.
Currently St. Hilda’s Anglican Church is the lead agency for the homeless shelter, which is housed in an annex building onsite. The church provides the space and oversees coordination of the effort, mainly because no one else has stepped up to do it and the church feels compelled to help.
“We need a lot more support to build a sustainable year-round shelter program for the Coast,” Li said.
This year the shelter was not approved for a $40,000 federal grant through the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, leaving it with just $33,000 to operate for the 2015-16 season and resulting in the move to an extreme weather shelter model.
That means the shelter will only open on days with heavy rains, high winds, snow on the ground or when the temperature dips below zero Celsius. Last year, under the cold weather shelter model, the shelter opened on Nov. 1 and stayed open every night until the end of March.
Added to the decrease in funding, the loss of former coordinator Brenda Wilkinson and several long-time volunteers has also put the shelter behind the eight ball this season.
New coordinator Nora Jessome was hired on Nov. 3 and she hopes to have the doors ready to open by Dec. 1, but it will depend on the hiring and training of staff over the next week and a half.
Once the shelter is staffed and ready, an extreme weather event will be needed to open the doors.
Some of that extreme weather is expected next week, with snow forecast for Tuesday, Nov. 24.
Gibsons director of parks and community services Wendy Gilbertson said her staff had seen the 56-year-old man hunker down in cold weather on park benches and in the bush behind the Gibsons and Area Community Centre in the past when the shelter in Sechelt wasn’t available.
“For years now we’ve been washing and drying blankets for him,” she said.
“We’ve got a washer and dryer and sometimes the poor guy was soaking wet. He got to know if he’d disappear for a day or two and his stuff wasn’t there, he’d phone me to see if we had his stuff and we’d bring it to him.”
Sechelt Nation Chief Calvin Craigan said the man was a member of the Lakota Nation, and that he was homeless on the Sunshine Coast for the better part of 20 years, sleeping in the bush and sometimes couch-surfing with Sechelt Nation members when the shelter wasn’t available.
Craigan said the man grew up in foster homes between Ontario and B.C. and eventually came to Sechelt where he connected with siblings who now live on the peninsula, but he was never able to secure steady employment or housing.
“He and I had many discussions about that, how that affected him as a First Nation boy growing up totally disoriented and that really affected his life psychologically, so they turn to drugs and alcohol to try to soothe that,” Craigan said.
He said the Sechelt Nation had helped the man get into drug rehabilitation programs “many, many times” over the years but he had trouble staying sober because “he had too many demons.”
Craigan said the man was a builder and an artist and at one time he even sketched a portrait of Craigan and his wife.
“He was a good Lakota man. I always told him that.”
