Kenora city council held a special meeting of the whole on Thursday to address community safety.
Three separate incidents involving assault or harassment at downtown businesses this month and the intense chatter on social media caused council to move up this meeting on public safety from next year.
Mayor Andrew Poirier said because of the short notice and special nature of the meeting, they were going to break with the conventional process of needing submitting a deputation to speak and instead opened it up to the floor for people in attendance.
“We need to come start coming up with solutions, whether it's short term, medium term, long term, this is the start of the journey,” Poirier said. "This is the start of where we're going to try and go as a community.”
Nearly 20 people took turns speaking at the podium, often emotionally, within the packed council chamber.
Dr. Marcia Little, a dentist with a practice on Matheson Street said she was concerned for the safety of her staff and patients. She said tires have been slashed, vehicles broken into in the parking lot, and a building window was recently broken.
“We had a man threatened to kill one of our receptionists, fortunately she locked the door before you could enter,” she said. “I empathize with the disease of drug and alcohol addiction, however, in these challenging times of business and staffing, we need to figure out solutions to keep our businesses safe and open.”
Scott Cook, the owner of Little Caesars pizza, said he attended to meeting to see how people may get their businesses back.
“We're going to lose our business in town. We’re assaulted on a daily basis, threatened to be stabbed by a screwdriver, threatened to be killed every day,” he said. “We are fighting a losing battle. I don't know what to do anymore.”
Andy Scribilo, the president of the Kenora and District Chamber of Commerce, said the community is in crisis.
“Our business group, they're stunned right now. I'm going to tell you that right now, being downtown. We've never seen this level [of concern] to this point ever in Kenora and we can go back decades.”
Mary Alice Smith the chair of Kenora Moving Forward, a community coalition addressing issues around homelessness and the underlying issues said it’s important not to paint everyone in the street community with the same brush.
“Our experience is that most people do not behave in the way that, some of the businesses have experienced and we our hearts really go out to people who have experienced these things and we want to be part of the solutions,” she said. “We're concerned about people linking a bunch of incidents together and creating a crisis and not looking at both sides of what's happening. Not everyone in the homeless community has addictions or mental health issues.”
She said they also believe that racism is a key part of what's happening.
“This has been a longstanding issue [when] people talk about making Kenora great again. And our question is great for who? It was never great here for Indigenous people ever,” she said. “It's never been great for a lot of people and so this fuels these interactions [online] and we're not going back to that.”
Smith called on the city to declare a housing and mental health emergency.
Tania Cameron said there were people in the community calling for vigilante justice or saying they would be armed coming into town.
“I come because I'm worried about my brother or sister that are on the streets,” she said. Are they going to be hurt because we have some ignorant people that are saying that [we] should quit feeding them? Let's quit housing them? We have a segment [of] people saying, let's just starve them out. Let's just let them die on the streets without saying it, right?”
“So I'm here because I want to make sure that I don't hear any bigoted or attacks for my people that happen, unfortunately, to be living on the streets, they have severe trauma in their lives."
Craig Lavand said it really hurts to see people talk about the situation and go back 100 years with a pitchfork mentality.
“I grew up on the streets. Just three years ago, I was committing crimes and running around just like everyone else and it hurts me to see how much people are getting violent with this vulnerable population. These people that are hurting and sad and they have addictions, so much trauma,” he said, pointing to himself as an example that it’s possible to change and heal, while also adding that people need homes.
“We need to come together and come up with solutions just like we are. We can't set ourselves back, we need to move forward.”
Denise Forsythe, the senior director of mental health and addictions at the Lake of the Woods District Hospital, said it is a small population of people “that are causing some challenges for us as a community, but those people are hurting.”
“One of the things I have been taught from clients and from family members is that we have to see situations from the eyes of people who actually have lived experience,” she said. “They don't always choose to be this way. Their life circumstance has not always been easy. I'm not condoning their behavior. But it's not everybody, we've worked with a lot of people that are very appreciative.”
Still she said she has seen a significant increase of challenges within the community.
Forsythe said all of the organizations with resources need to come together to contribute to a solution.
“There are a lot of challenges, but there's a real commitment by a large group of us to make some positive change,” she said. ”We need to work together with city council with local business and with organizations and with our First Nations partners and also through the voice of lived experience.”
Dr. Jonny Grek, a family physician, said he sees the issue as a service provider and as a parent.
“So I recognize that I feel like I'm walking both lines here of wanting to help the situation improve [as a physician] and help the lives of the people that we see downtown, but also knowing that I have my five year old and three year old and I am I comfortable bringing them downtown? So it's a pretty challenging thing.”
Grek said there’s a massive duplication of health and social services.
“This is not necessarily that we're under-resourced because I think that Kenora probably has what it needs to tackle this problem for the most part in health and social, but we have got to come together,” he said. “The [All Nations Health Partners] is a great platform to do that. I don't know if we're really utilizing that as well as it should be done.”
