The sun is shining brightly, but it doesn’t do much against the cold. It’s -11 C and dropping.Outside the All Saints winter respite centre, Tania Pelletier’s breath rises gently in the frozen air. She goes by Snickers on the streets, where she’s well known, she says.She and her husband have been at the respite centre on Dundas St. E. and Sherbourne St. almost all winter, forced inside by the frigid weather.It’s not their first choice: They’ve tried to get into a shelter, but they’re full; they’ve tried to get into a detox centre but they’re full, too.“I admit it is good for a place to get out of the cold for a minute, but it’s somewhere I don’t want to be or end up again,” she says. “If it was still summer I wouldn’t be here, I’d be camped up somewhere in a tent.”An ambulance pulls up to the church, as she’s talking, it’s the second one that day. Two paramedics roll a stretcher to the steps before going inside. It’s just a couple minutes before they’re back, but someone’s already taken the blankets.At All Saints, you get a mat and a thin blue and white blanket. It’s not enough to keep warm, Snickers says.But it’s better than sleeping outside.In early December, she was banned from All Saints for five weeks for fighting. She and her husband moved to the respite centre at St. Felix, but they weren’t allowed there either.For three nights, they slept outside under the dome by 361 University Ave.In the summertime, about 20 people will sleep there, she said. Security usually leaves them alone and there are plugs along the wall to charge phones, she says.Plus, they’re close to Osgoode Hall, where the law society offers meals for the hungry. Sometimes the police wake them up so they don’t miss breakfast, Snickers said.It’s also close to the peace garden at Nathan Phillips Square.“When I had my laptop ...
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