2 overdose deaths in Montreal lead to call for action among Indigenous community

Two deaths on the streets of Montreal have advocates calling attention to the overdose crisis and are also raising questions about the need for more resources in the community.

Two deaths on the streets of Montreal have advocates calling attention to the ongoing overdose crisis.

Two members of Montreal’s Indigenous community died early Saturday after possible drug overdoses, raising the attention of advocates around the need for more supervised drug consumption sites and emergency resources for the unhoused community.

At around 8:15 a.m., SPVM police said officers were called to assist ambulance crews performing resuscitation on two individuals in cardiopulmonary arrest near the corner of St. Laurent and Ontario Street.

Both individuals were transported by paramedics and pronounced dead at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, police said.

Police officials told Global News in an email that they are awaiting results from the coroner’s investigation, but no further details have been provided on the cause of death of the two individuals.

According to Pierre Parent, an outreach worker who knew one of the victims, the woman was well-known in Montreal’s Indigenous community.

Parent suspects that the deaths were related to potential overdoses. For him, as an Indigenous person, “the news is devastating.”

“We’ve lost far too many people in the last year from our community members itself,” he said, referring to Montreal’s Indigenous unhoused community.