With the increase in opiod-related overdoses in Peterborough, the Peterborough Downtown Business Improvement Area (DBIA) has partnered with Peterborough Public Health and Harm Reduction Works @ PARN to provide naloxone kits, at no cost, to a number of strategically located downtown businesses.

Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan among others, is a medication used to temporarily reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, buying time for a person to get the necessary medical attention they may need. Naloxone has been successfully used to save lives in Peterborough and around the world.

Naloxone kits come in two versions: administered by injection or by nasal spray; the kits to be provided to downtown Peterborough businesses will be the nasal spray versions.

Staff at the downtown businesses that have naloxone kits on site will be trained on how to identify and respond to an opioid poisoning or overdose. As well as DBIA members, the Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce is inviting its members to be trained and equipped with naloxone kits.

“We’re in the midst of an opioid crisis in Peterborough,” says DBIA executive director Terry Guiel. “We see first-hand people struggling with addiction and sadly, we’ve already lost too many members of our community. If helping local businesses know what to do when they see an opioid poisoning saves one life, it’s worth it.”

Peterborough Public Health and PARN will be providing brief training sessions along with the free kits in the front lobby of VentureNorth (270 George St. N., Peterborough) from 8 to 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 27th and Friday, June 28th, and from 8 to 10 a.m., 12 to 2 p.m, and 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 4th and Friday, July 5th.

“Having been in business for 43 years downtown, we see a crisis at the moment with overdoses and addiction and we feel we need to help the community and those in need of help anyway we can,” says Andrew Damiany, manager of Gentry Apparel.

Stickers will be available for any business that would like to display one in their window, to let people know they are trained on how to respond to an opioid poisoning.

“We know that people working downtown are experiencing the impact of the opioid crisis on a daily basis and want to do what they can to help,” says PARN executive director Kim Dolan. “This initiative increases our collective response to opioid poisonings in our community and sends a strong message that people in Peterborough are prepared to step up and save lives.”

“This program reflects the caring attitude of the local business community towards people with addictions and the growing awareness that this issue affects us all,” adds Dr. Rosana Salvaterra, Medical Officer of Health at Peterborough Public Health.

“In some ways, this demonstration of compassion is just as effective as the naloxone itself because it reduces the terrible stigma faced by people who struggle with addictions. Stigma remains one of the biggest barriers preventing people from seeking treatment. Kindness, as well as clinical interventions, are the key ingredients to solving this issue.”

The kits are being provided by the DBIA, PARN, Peterborough Public Health, and the City of Peterborough.

VIDEO: Saving people from opioid overdoses with naloxone

“The litmus test of a caring and compassionate community is how we treat our most vulnerable,” says Peterborough Police Service deputy chief Tim Farquharson.

“Addiction is not a moral failure; it is a medical disorder. We are all in this dilemma together and it will take us all, as a community, working collaboratively to reverse this tragic tide of needless death. Thanks very much to our Downtown Business Improvement Area group for taking a leadership role in this epic challenge.”

For interested in receiving thorough and no-cost overdose response training, Question of Care Peterborough offers training sessions throughout the year. Visit questionofcare.com for information on upcoming sessions.

At first glance, the announcement of several major residential construction projects in the City of Peterborough’s east end is bound to be greeted with some sense of excitement.

After all, housing is among the City’s most pressing issues, and it has become more and more obvious that we need to address the current occupancy and rent price crisis that is making housing in Peterborough so difficult for renters.

With nearly zero percent vacancy and entry-level price points for rental units being unaffordable for many residents, things have, indeed, become dire for much of our population when it comes to securing a place to live.

A closer look, though, reveals both a lack a foresight and a lack of units targeted for existing renters.

As it grows, a municipality has to plan for and supply sustainable and affordable housing. And I am most concerned that the City of Peterborough is not making this a priority as construction projects are green-lit. I also fear that, with the announcement of yet more development along the Lift Lock, the “village” of East City will be a major casualty in this lack of planning.

Should we move forward with the announced development, East City, as a community, is done. It will become an area stretched past capacity in both infrastructure and services for existing and new residents. Parts of it will be unrecognizable to how current residents currently experience and use it. In short, it will be an absolute urban planning failure.

As it currently stands, there are three major apartment/condo complexes and a subdivision all planned to straddle the Lift Lock and reach down Armour Hill on Hunter Street East. That’s something like 1,200 houses and condominium/apartment units on an already overstretched (and severely limited) transportation corridor.

With our current and expected occupancy rate per unit, that translates into more than 3,000 additional people — which, I’m willing to estimate, is roughly the population of East City’s traditional boundary of Parkhill Road/the Canal/Maria Street/the River.

No community can handle that kind of immediate densification. Particularly one the size of East City.

We can throw the new Canadian Canoe Museum into this area of growth for good measure. And a 600-student elementary school.

We’re looking at way more people and vehicles than can be accommodated.

What’s worse, the builds don’t even meet community needs.

Neither the Ashborough Village subdivision nor the TVM Group condos will be priced anywhere near affordably for renters or first-time home buyers — at least not in the Peterborough job market. The Skyline Group apartment complex, representing only a small part of this overall growth, will be charging “market rate,” which will push the prices beyond what many students, young workers, and lower-income people can afford.

Just listen to renters now: the Peterborough job market and cost of living do not allow for the prices being charged for rent.

The Ashburnham Realty units planned for along the Rotary Trail certainly don’t look like they’re going to be affordable to many existing Peterborough renters either.

An affordable housing strategy needs to be part of an overall effective master plan. And not just “affordable housing” in a subsidized manner, but housing that is affordable to those struggling to survive on lower wages.

That plan also has to include complete streets transportation planning and health/lifestyle/social infrastructure.

Planning needs to happen before builds are announced. But, so far, there’s been no word on how the City will accommodate this pace of growth, the needs of the existing community, the needs of new residents, or the strain it will put on an infrastructure that is already stressed.

In short, we’re building a city on a village footprint with village infrastructure.

Which just won’t work.

For anyone.

Moving traffic in/out/through East City is going to be a major, major challenge. Your access points are the Lift Lock, the Maria Street swing bridge, and the single lane McFarlane bridge. Two of those are residential. Two of those are one way. And your main intersection will be the hilltop Armour Road and Hunter Street East.

Just imagine.

Traffic will spill into side streets, affecting lifestyle, quality of life, and pedestrian safety. As it is, the Nicholls Oval park and Armour Hill areas are dangerous pedestrian zones. Expect more traffic/traffic safety/pedestrian safety hotspots to develop. The Maria Street area in particular.

It will become common for cars to race through narrow residential streets to avoid the non-arterial routes that will now be major traffic corridors.

In fact, it’s already happening, with vehicles avoiding the McFarlane Street/Armour Road and Parkhill Road/Armour Road intersections and using Swanston Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and Caddy Street. Similarly, Douro, Mark, and Rogers Streets are already busy with much of the relief traffic from Armour Road and Hunter Street.

This is going to get dramatically worse. And it’s going to spread.

As the former chair of Active and Efficient Community Routes Peterborough and Active and Safe Routes to School Peterborough, I remain alarmed at some of the pedestrian dangers in the current East City neighbourhood. As the former Air Quality/Transportation manager for GreenUP, I’m concerned about our already existing inability to deal with infrastructure needs around some of our most frequently used pedestrian areas.

During recent Curtis Creek neighbourhood environmental focus groups with community members and stakeholders, traffic reduction and traffic calming were both cited at primary needs of the community. In short, areas such as Armour Road are already failing us as mixed-use transportation zones. And we’re planning on adding thousands of more residents — and their vehicles — into this already overburdened residential neighbourhood.

As for services, the new East City school is being planned for the middle of this already-stressed area — and directly across the street from 500 new housing units. An already very large school, its capacity does not allow for this unplanned growth; these builds will push the school past its capability to meet enrollment numbers, and ground hasn’t even been broken in constructing it yet.

It is also going to be surrounded by extremely high volumes of traffic. This is definitely a situation where the kids attending the school are in tough.

Where, I wonder, will all of these residents go for a doctor? And how the heck will they get there?

And, again, what’s worse is that these builds are doing little to address the current housing crisis. With the existing development master plan looking at an increase of population of 31,000, and with the access price for all of these units being as high as they are, it is very apparent that developers are not looking to produce dwellings that will reduce the housing crisis in Peterborough. The bulk of these properties just aren’t meant to attract the existing population of people living here.

In short, we’re adding all of the problems of unplanned densification while doing little to address the glaring needs of our existing housing crisis.

And it is definitely unplanned. After all, this area is not classified as one of the “intensification nodes” listed in our current master plan, nor is it in one of the established “intensification corridors.” That in itself speaks volumes. The area was just never meant to house thousands of potential residents.

I always hoped that Peterborough would be different than other Ontario communities that put growth before planning. We aren’t. We haven’t.

And we’ll feel the consequences. Sooner rather than later.

Right now, the future of Peterborough — including the fate of East City — rests with our current council. We have passionate progressive leaders. We need planning policies that reflect that.

But they need to act. And they need to act now.

Before it is just East City that is lost.

On Saturday morning (June 22), Kawartha Land Trust (KLT) officially opened the Cation Wildlife Preserve near Coboconk to the public — and received $215,000 in funding from the federal government to support its work in protecting the preserve.

Peterborough-Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef, who attended the grand opening celebration along with Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MP Jamie Schmale, made the funding announcement on behalf of Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna.

“The protection of the Cation Wildlife Preserve is part of our government’s plan to double the amount of nature protected in our lands and oceans,” Monsef said.

The funding comes from the federal government’s Canada Nature Fund, a $500-million investment to support the protection and conservation of Canada’s ecosystems, landscapes, and biodiversity, including species at risk. Federal contributions are matched by philanthropic foundations, corporations, not-for-profits, provinces, territories, and other partners, raising up to $1 billion for conservation initiatives.

The 669-acre Cation Wildlife Preserve is located on French Settlement Road north of Indian Point Provincial Park on Balsam Lake, around 45 kilometres north of Lindsay. The property wsa donated to KLT by David and Sharon Cation, who wanted to ensure the property remains protected in perpetuity.

The preserve includes marked trails for passive recreational use by the public, including hiking, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing. The official opening included guided walks of the trails on the property.

“We are grateful for the federal government’s contribution to support the protection of the Cation Wildlife Preserve,” said KLT development manager Tara King. “And also Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Ecological Gift program that provides tax incentives to land owners to protect private lands in perpetuity.”

King went on to describe some of the features of the protected property.

“This landscape is vibrant and so full of life. A trail system passes through the grasslands and meadows that are filled with different butterflies and moths. The air is filled with the songs of different grassland bird species including eastern towhees, American goldfinches, and field sparrows that are foraging through the shrubs and trees.”

The Cation Wildlife Preserve is in a natural conservation corridor that sits right in the middle of several important protected areas, including Balsam Lake, Indian Point, and Queen Elizabeth Wildlands Provincial Parks, as well as the Altberg Wildlife Sanctuary Nature Reserve and the Carl Sedore Wildlife Management Area.

KLT currently protects 17 properties totalling 4,101 acres, and assists in the management of five additional properties.

“Canadians like the leaders at Kawartha Land Trust asked our government to introduce a program to incentivize more conservation,” Monsef said. “We listened. Working together, we will ensure the wealth of our region is protected for our kids and grandkids.”

After being the well-known face of YWCA Peterborough Haliburton for the past 35 years, Lynn Zimmer is retiring as executive director of the organization that supports local women facing violence, poverty, and oppression.

News of Zimmer’s upcoming retirement, effective November 30th, was shared at YWCA Peterborough Haliburton’s annual general meeting on Thursday night (June 20).

“It is with mixed emotions that the board of directors of YWCA Peterborough Haliburton accepted the retirement announcement of our beloved executive director Lynn Zimmer,” says YWCA board president Neera Jeyabalan. “Lynn has been the face of YWCA Peterborough Haliburton for 35 years and her departure will be a big adjustment for all of us.”

“During her years as the thoughtful and courageous leader of our YWCA, thousands of women and children fleeing violence and abuse have been given a safe space to find their way towards a better future. Her legacy with our organization will be everlasting and her achievements will be remembered with great honour and love.”

“We are thrilled for Lynn as she enters this new chapter of her life and we are certain, that even in retirement, she will continue to be remarkable and continue to achieve remarkable feats, in ways only Lynn can.”

Zimmer has been working to prevent violence and promote equity for women for almost 46 years.

The Kitchener native began her work career in 1969 as a reporter for the Peterborough Examiner’s “women’s page” which, at the time, was more about brides and social events. In her early twenties, Zimmer soon discovered and embraced feminism, and began writing about issues of real importance to women.

Her next move was to Toronto, where she tried law school for a year before dropping out (one professor would regale the primarily male students with stories of “funny” cases of sexual assault). With no immediate prospects for work, she began volunteering for Women’s Place, an organization for women.

The organization determined there was a demand for a temporary place for economically disadvantaged women (often with their children) who wanted to escape from unhappy marriages. Zimmer posted a note on the wall of Women’s Place, proposing a meeting to discuss the creation of a women’s crisis shelter. Eleven women came together to open Interval House in 1973.

After opening Interval House, the founders soon realized domestic violence was the real reason women were fleeing their marriages, with every woman entering the shelter reporting both physical and emotional abuse. Interval House not only became Canada’s first shelter for abused women, but laid the foundation for bringing the issue of violence against women to the attention of both government and the public. By 1987, there were 264 shelters in Canada for women fleeing domestic violence.

While Zimmer and her husband moved to Peterborough in 1981, she continued to commute to her job in Toronto. Three years later, after the Peterborough YWCA changed its mandate to focus on women fleeing violence and opened the Crossroads women’s shelters, Zimmer was hired as executive director.

Since then, Zimmer has been at the helm of YWCA Peterborough Haliburton, strengthening and expanding the organization’s support for local women and their children.

Today, the organization operates the Crossroads Shelter for women and children fleeing abuse, crisis support and outreach services, Family Court Support, START (Support Team for Abuse Response Today), Nourish, Homeward Bound, GirlSpace/BoySpace, Education Awards for abuse survivors, Centennial Crescent second stage housing community, and a crisis ‘safe space’ called HERS in Haliburton County.

Zimmer holds a bachelor of arts in communication arts from the Université de Montréal (Loyola College). In 2002, she received a master’s in management for the voluntary sector from McGill University.

As she approached her 35th anniversary as executive director, Zimmer decided it was time to move on.

“It feels like this is a good time to move forward into the next phase of my life, even though I still can’t quite imagine how it will feel not to walk in the door of the YWCA every morning,” Zimmer says.

“It’s been an incredible journey over the past 45-plus years, to be a part of creating the violence against women movement, being a part of opening Canada’s first-ever women’s shelter in Toronto, and looking at the extensive services our YWCA in Peterborough and Haliburton provides to women and children today, and all of the many steps we took along the way.”

The YWCA Peterborough Haliburton board of directors plans to begin a recruitment process later this summer for a new executive director.

In the aftermath of this week’s City Hall announcement of who will sit on the panel at a July 11th community forum on the ongoing opioid overdose crisis in Peterborough, it was who wasn’t on that list that drew the most response.

Co-hosted by Peterborough Mayor Diane Therrien and Selwyn Deputy Mayor Sherry Senis, panel members announced for the 6 p.m. forum at Market Hall are Peterborough Medical Officer of Health Dr. Rosana Salvaterra, Peterborough Deputy Police Chief Tim Farquharson, Peterborough county-city paramedic Dan Farrow, and residents Alex Bierk and Sally Carson, both of whom have suffered personal loss as a result of opioid overdoses.

The forum comes during a year that has seen, at last count, 19 deaths in the city resulting from opioid overdoses — more than the total for all of 2018. Over the course of just one weekend in early June, there were 13 opioid-related overdoses with two of those overdoses resulting in death.

Immediately following the announcement of the panel, the omission of a Peterborough woman who for years has been on the front lines of drug overdose, treatment, and counselling — locally and across Canada — drew criticism on social media. As well, Mayor Therrien’s office received several emails and phone calls.

“In capital letters, I’m not surprised but I am disappointed,” says Peggy Shaughnessy, the owner of Peterborough-based Whitepath Consulting and Counselling Services whose Redpath program addresses the underlying issues around drug addiction.

“Supposedly the whole point of this summit is to try to find solutions. If you look at the people chosen to sit on the panel, they’re the same people the Selwyn deputy mayor had on two separate committees. If those people were able to find solutions, they wouldn’t need a summit now. They continue to bring the same things to the table that haven’t worked for 20 years.”

“I’ve walked the walk. I’ve developed programs by collecting stories from across the country by working with not just elders and First Nations communities but psychologists and corrections officials. I think I may have a piece of the solution. I’m not saying I have the solution, but I do have a piece of the puzzle no else has.”

On Thursday morning (June 20), Mayor Therrien confirmed that Shaughnessy has now been invited, by an email sent to her Wednesday afternoon, to be on the panel.

“There has been some confusion around this,” Mayor Therrien tells kawarthaNOW. “I apologized to Peggy for that confusion.”

“I know there was some concern from what came out in the press release — that there wasn’t enough representation of frontline harm reduction workers — so we’ve reached out to a few people. Peggy is certainly included. I haven’t heard back from her yet but I’m hoping to follow up today (June 20).”

The Mayor’s email, which Shaughnessy has shared with kawarthaNOW, also invites Shaughnessy to attend a logistics meeting next week with PARN executive director Kim Dolan, who will be moderating the July 11th panel. Along with Shaughnessy and Deputy Police Chief Farquharson, Dolan was one of the panel members at a June 12th public meeting on the opioid crisis hosted by Ashburnham Ward councillors Keith Riel and Gary Baldwin.

With the Mayor’s apology and invitation now in hand, Shaughnessy says she is considering the offer to participate on the July 11th panel. While she remains disappointed with the late invitation, she says she wants to focus on the “best result to heal the community”.

“I’m so overwhelmed by the phone calls and emails that I’m getting from people wondering what they’re supposed to do with their children,” she points out. “I just came from a house where I was doing an intervention to keep people alive.”

“I have eight grandchildren. I’m not going to bury a grandchild. I’m just starting a movement that this city has never seen before and they better step aside. I’m pulling together every advocate that everyone hates into one big group. They’ll be at that July 11 meeting. This meeting better not be something where (Peterborough MP) Maryam Monsef comes out of the blue with a cheque for a consumption site. We may need a consumption site, but we need way more than that.”

One person who has invited Shaughnessy’s input from the get-go is Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith. He reached out this week to a number of organizations, Whitepath among them, with the intent of forming a working committee that will lead to the establishment of a consumption and treatment centre in the city.

“Doug Ford is probably the least-liked premier we’ve ever had but I think Dave Smith still has a conscience … he knows people here are dying,” says Shaughnessy.

“I think his government believes if you’re going to have a consumption site, you better have a treatment section. I have to agree with that. I think we need a whole group of services to come together and start working together rather than building empires.”

While he wasn’t part of the panel, MPP Smith’s attendance and input at the June 12th public meeting on the opioid crisis impressed and encouraged Shaughnessy.

“When he stood up and said he’s going to try to do something, I don’t think he would have done that if he didn’t meant it. I met with him for probably two hours yesterday (June 18). I’ve been meeting many people trying to pull together not just advocacy groups but business people too. We have several people and a lot of things going on in the background. There are no services here for people to go to.”

Shaughnessy is also impressed with Deputy Police Chief Farquharson, who was one of her co-panellists at the June 12th gathering.

“He cares about our community more than anybody; our city is so lucky to have him,” says Shaughnessy.

The delay in the invitation for Shaughnessy’s participation on the July 11th panel aside, both her and Mayor Therrien are in agreement about one thing: the time for more action and less talking around solutions to curbing the opioid crisis is now.

“You can call it an epidemic, you can call it whatever you want, but throw the semantics out the window … let’s get to the table and say ‘Holy shit, we better act at midnight tonight,” urges Shaughnessy.

“This isn’t about just getting a handle on the social problems we’re faced with today. We’ve got to create a whole new system; a system that isn’t always relying on government for solutions. They (politicians) have to be reminded that we have experts in our city that can solve this problem.”

For her part, Mayor Therrien agrees that Peterborough needs a treatment solution.

“People are dying and we need to be getting stuff done now,” she says. “I’m hoping out of the summit that we get some concrete solutions and some concrete commitments from senior levels of government to step up and help fund, ideally, a comprehensive detox centre, but also raise awareness and break down stigmas.”

“People have a stereotype of people with substance abuse. I know people who have lost children. They are your neighbours. They are your co-workers. A lot of the time it’s because they didn’t know where to go, and there was a stigma around admitting they have an opioid or substance abuse issue. We have to get past that.”

Doors to the Thursday, July 11th forum at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre open at 6 p.m., with the panel discussion beginning at 6:30 p.m. Those interested in attending are encouraged to register in advance as there is limited seating available. Register online through Eventbrite at www.eventbrite.ca/e/opioid-summit-tickets-63434450148.