work in such an unrelenting disaster zone exacts a heavy toll. the trailer staff bear witness to untold trauma, grief and misery, day after day.
“our staff are seeing things that are not normal,” says anne marie hopkins, a former trailer manager who’s now director of operations at ottawa inner city health, the non-profit agency that runs the trailer. “it is extreme conditions: they are seeing such high levels of pain, and people in the deepest, darkest places of their addiction. they’re bringing people back from the brink of death over and over and over again.”
from 2019: anne marie hopkins, a former trailer manager who’s now director of operations at ottawa inner city health, checks in on users at the supervised consumption site behind the shepherds of good hope in downtown ottawa.
julie oliver
/
postmedia
says fiona miller, a nurse who began at the trailer as a harm reduction worker: “it’s really chaotic because you’re watching people actively injecting and using drugs but you’re also trying to deal with secondary issues like infections, or a lack of food and clothing.
“there’s this huge fire,” she says, “but then you’re also trying to put out all these other, smaller fires.”
to further complicate matters, supervised consumption sites like the trailer are now under an intense — and distortionary — political microscope.
earlier this week, ontario’s progressive conservative government announced that 10 supervised consumption sites will be closed in the province because of their proximity to schools. in ottawa, the somerset west community centre consumption site on eccles street will be forced to shut down by april 2025.
“it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to a community, to have one of these safe injection sites open in their neighbourhood,”
premier doug ford told reporters
.