An overdose prevention site in a Parkdale parkette will shut down this week because of weather conditions that would make the site difficult to operate safely, organizers say.The tents in Dunn Avenue Parkette, near Queen St. W. and Lansdowne Ave., will close Wednesday, the Parkdale Overdose Prevention Society said.The group said the decision was based on their experience with October weather conditions at Moss Park last year, and in the parkette for the last several weeks.The rain and wind make it “impossible” to run the sites safely and support at-risk users, they said.Steph Massey, a volunteer with the Toronto and Parkdale overdose prevention societies, said that on Monday night winds at the parkette were so strong that a tent blew off the ground and the walls wouldn’t stay attached.“And on Saturday the tent flipped over, which puts other users at the park at risk along with volunteers and other people who access the tent,” Massey said.The Parkdale tent site, which opened as a pop-up site at Beaty Boulevard Park before moving to Dunn Avenue Parkette, opened following the August announcement that the provincial government was holding off on opening three new overdose prevention sites that were planned for Toronto, Thunder Bay and St. Catharines pending a review of harm-reduction practices.The Toronto site would have been located at the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, and was set to open the same day Health Minister Christine Elliott made the announcement to shelve it. In Moss Park last year, after similar rain and wind conditions made it impossible to operate out of tents at the overdose prevention site, Massey said a trailer was crowdsourced and put in — something she doesn’t see happening in Dunn Avenue Parkette.“We’ll be doing the best we can with what we’ve got which is basically nothing,” Massey said. “You know, a lot of people who are suffering and a bunch of naloxone kit ...
|
