Quebec doesn't have data on homeless deaths. Advocates say that needs to change
CBC
Frédérique Royer looked out her Montreal window on Sept. 8 and spotted a man lying motionless on the ground next to a park bench.
His skin looked purple.
"I saw right away that something was really wrong," said Royer, a resident of the city's Plateau neighbourhood. "I went outside quickly to get next to him and I called 911 right away."
An Urgences-santé ambulance arrived and Peter Harrison's death was confirmed almost instantly. The 61-year-old man appeared to have been homeless.
In the days following Harrison's death, Royer and others left flowers next to the bench at Yvonne-Maisonneuve Park.
"It's a really tragic situation," she said. "It's people that we bump into every day, yet they still remain invisible."
In many ways, the invisibility of homelessness in Quebec is apparent not just in life but in death as well.
Harrison is among several people who have died in Montreal in recent weeks who were believed to be experiencing homelessness.
Although some of those deaths were reported in the media, there's no real way of knowing how many homeless people — in either the province at large or the city of Montreal — die in any given year and why they're dying.
When homeless people die in Quebec, very little, if anything, gets done with that information.
Experts say that's a problem.
They say collecting that data and making it public would help shape policy and potentially save lives. They also say it's a question of dignity and respect.
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"These are people, human beings with families and people who love them and their lives were important and they had meaning."
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