In life, Ellie Fedak hoped that people would take a kinder and less judgmental view of the plight of vulnerable and marginalized women. “Homelessness is not about being a junkie, or like an addiction person. It is about trauma. You don’t know the things that we have gone through,” Fedak, then 34, told the Star during a visit to Sistering drop-in centre last year.“Some are here because of violence in home life, with men, boyfriends, or rapes, or so deep in our addiction that we have nowhere to go.”On July 30, Eleanor Fedak, whom friends called Ellie, became one of the hundreds of people recently lost to overdose and addiction in Toronto. To those who knew her, she was not just another victim. She was a mother, an animal lover, a champion tenpin bowler in her youth. She was loved.Fedak’s funeral took place in Edmonton. She was 35. Her death comes in the midst of a tainted drug crisis, with 303 people dying from overdoses in Toronto last year, up 63 per cent from 2016, according to Toronto Public Health. Read more: Toronto overdose deaths highlight need for prevention sites, advocacy group saysChief medical officer calls for decriminalization of all drugs for personal useWith Doug Ford as premier, city braces for fight over supervised injection services“She was a beautiful girl and she tried hard, but she was in such a dark place,” said Fedak’s mother, Josephine Giampa, who said police told her that an overdose was the suspected cause of her daughter’s death. The cause of death will be determined by the coroner. “That is the worst feeling in the world, when you can’t help your child. All I know is part of me is gone.” Fedak had been a frequent guest of Sistering, a place where women can visit any time of day or night, enjoy a meal, have a shower, use computers, visit with friends and find support and safety. There are no beds. People sleep on reclining chairs, or on mats on the floor. In ...
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