PETERBOROUGH, ONT. — I’ve come to think that we Canadians are so polite that even though we now find ourselves living inside a real-life zombie movie, many seem afraid to raise a fuss for fear of offending the zombies.
“Sorry, sir, but I think you’re gnawing on my arm.”
In our case, the zombie apocalypse is the epidemic of drug addiction that fills our streets with addicts. Contemplating their next fix — or in the temporary delirium granted by the last one — they shuffle in front of our cars, defecate on our sidewalks, and break into our cars and houses.
We all have our stories of zombie run-ins.
Last week, while visiting my local ER, I met someone I’ll call “Dwight.” I was there to help my child. Dwight was there to get access to drugs.
I shouldn’t have known Dwight’s name — I certainly didn’t know the name of any other patient in the small curtained off “rooms” where we found ourselves. But Dwight was hard to miss. Loud rock music was blaring from his room. It’s not normal in an ER but apparently Dwight needed to be calmed down and he had an iPad and this is all the nurses had to work with.
It wasn’t enough. Soon Dwight was demanding drugs. Like RIGHT NOW. The nurses couldn’t help. He’d just been given drugs.
That’s when he began to smash things.
When he smashed the computer next to his bed, the security guards came. But they didn’t approach Dwight. As the nurse kept telling him, security was just there to keep everyone else safe.
“Please sit back down Dwight. Go back to your bed Dwight.”
Dwight didn’t go back to bed. The shouting got worse. So did the swearing and then, randomly, the accusations of racism against the non-white security guards who had just shown up. It wasn’t until the police came and restrained Dwight to the gurney that things began to settle down. Though not until they had sedated him.
In the meantime, my own child, who was in immense pain, didn’t get attention. The nurses and doctors couldn’t get near us.
But don’t worry, Dwight was OK.
Over the past year I’ve almost killed addicts several times. Not that I wanted to. But when you’re driving along the street and they randomly walk out in front of your car, it’s a little tricky not to become an accidental killer.
Trips to the library aren’t exactly like when I was a child. Our library is downtown across from an old Greyhound station. It’s not as if a bus station is entirely salubrious, but when they replaced it with the “Consumption and Treatment Services Site” things got a lot more zombie-movie-like.
Recent trips to the library have included such highlights as watching one man defecate beside our car even as, a few feet away, a group of people huddled in a group and injected drugs. Then there was the time I entered the library only to find a couple spreading out their things in the library foyer, including drug paraphernalia and large bottles of booze.
If you went by what it is mostly used for, you might think the library toilet in the basement — right next to the children’s section — is meant to be a homeless person’s French-shower location and possibly a place to shoot up (if the sounds in the stalls are anything to go by).
There’s nothing like a little drug addiction to go with your Harry Potter.
Perhaps the most egregious case is the fate of the Silver Bean café, a charming little gem of a spot housed in a water-side building that was a local millennium project. It’s advertised as everyone’s “cottage in the city” and it is genuinely a magical place. Of course, it’s also very much a cottage in the city for the region’s drug addicts.
Do you have to go to the washroom after your latte? You might think you’d go to the purpose-built public toilets only a few feet away from the café. But you’d be wrong, or just stupid. The entrance to the washrooms is a garbage dump continuously occupied by hordes of men and women who are only partly aware of what is happening in the world and who think 9:30 a.m. on a Tuesday is a perfectly good time to enjoy a bit of beer and meth, thank you very much.
Instead, the café, which is tiny and has almost no inside space, allows customers to go around back and through its kitchen into a tiny washroom. At least the zombies at the public toilet aren’t disturbed.
There are more stories — everyone has them. There was the woman who I saw last winter stumbling through downtown without any pants on. Or underwear either.
Then there are the women who linger on street corners on the edge of downtown, bedraggled, drug-skinny, and haggard. If only you’ll meet their eye as you drive by, they can offer you some sexual services.
Peterborough isn’t unique. My zombie apocalypse is probably your zombie apocalypse, too.
All of this has happened while the so-called “harm reduction” programs have expanded. And even though the “housing first” advocates did build a new community of tiny homes for the homeless just a couple of years ago, somehow, for some inexplicable reason, the problem has only gotten worse.
I won’t pretend to have any elaborate plan or solution. This seems to me to be one of those things that social scientists call a “wicked problem.”
But I do think it’s worth pointing out — again and again — that it is very much like a zombie apocalypse. And just like in any zombie movie, the zombies aren’t the only ones getting hurt.
National Post
