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A year has passed since the death of Bob Allen, a man who died on the streets of downtown St. Catharines, Ont., from hypothermia, during –8 C temperatures.
Allen was experiencing homelessness when he died on Jan. 26, 2025.
His friends, family and the substance use support group Niagara Advocates with Lived/Living Experience (NALE) held a vigil last week to commemorate him, along others without shelter who died or lost a limb in the extreme cold.
The evening vigil took place just as a Niagara Region council meeting was about to begin in Thorold, Ont. At the meeting, a local councillor was putting forward a motion to provide more winter support for people experiencing homelessness and change the temperature threshold that would activate the region’s winter emergency protocol.
Allen’s sister Elizabeth Allen drove six hours south from her home in Temiskaming Shores, Ont., to join the vigil and speak at the meeting in support of the change.
“I’m not normally one to speak up, but I feel this is important,” Elizabeth told CBC News. “My brother doesn’t have a voice anymore.”
St. Catharines regional councillor Haley Bateman introduced the motion to expand the region’s winter weather emergency protocol and see the protocol activated when temperatures, including wind chill, hit 0 C instead of –10 C.
Council says the threshold was already brought down to –10 C from from –15 C earlier this winter.
When the current protocol is activated, Niagara Region says it informs its network of shelters, outreach teams, transits, homeless agencies, emergency health services, Niagara regional police and partners to contact and support those unhoused. It also prompts the opening of more beds.
However, Bateman believes the –10 C threshold is still too cold.
“Speaking with residents for the last three years, they feel that’s too cold,” she said. “[Allen]’s death was absolutely preventable.”
Scott Neufeld, community psychology assistant professor at Brock University and co-chair of NALE, believes the current regional temperature marker was arbitrarily chosen.
“It’s not correlated to actual risk to people who can absolutely develop frostbite, cold weather-related injuries, and experience hypothermia and death, as we saw with Bob,” said Neufeld.
“If [the proposed protocol] had been in place a year ago, maybe my brother would still be here and not have died in this horrific way,” said Allen.
Motion deferred to Feb. 10 public health meeting
In the motion, Coun. Bateman asks the proposed winter protocol be established to “provide for rapid outreach,” and “treat any known unhoused individual who cannot be located” during cold alerts “as a missing and endangered person.”
That would prompt outreach groups and emergency services to help locate those who have checked into a shelter and go outside, but have not returned.
Bateman, who has worked with a women’s shelter, says it happens often where people have left their belongings in the shelter without being formally released, indicating they may be missing.
“That concerns me greatly and has always concerned me because they’re so vulnerable,” said Bateman. “They have literally no food, no shelter, no money to work with.”
St. Catharines regional councillor Laura Ip expressed concern over the resources required to support such a system.
Missing people are considered a “Priority 1” response and would prompt the deployment of many resources to locate people who may be choosing not to stay in a shelter or do not want to interact with police, Ip said at the Jan. 29 meeting.
Bateman’s motion was ultimately deferred to a Feb. 10 public health and social services committee meeting.
The issue has an impact on local health services as well, Bateman told CBC.
The winter season puts pressure on the region’s emergency department, as hospitals become a last resort for homeless people when shelters are full, according to Niagara Health.
Emergency departments at Niagara Health’s hospitals received 5,097 visits by patients who identified as homeless at check in during the winter months of 2024-2025, a nearly 52 per cent increase from the years before.
“Cold weather increases respiratory illness, worsens chronic conditions and creates additional health risks for people living outdoors or in unstable housing,” Niagara Health told CBC News.
