EDMONTON—There was a time when the only way to find veterans in crisis was to comb the streets of Alberta’s big cities in hopes of finding those former soldiers who desperately needed to be connected with emergency services, employment and housing.
“My friend had a World War II vet, near homeless, and the only way we could get in contact … was to go prowl the streets and find him,” said Gerry Finlay, command service officer for the Royal Canadian Legion’s Alberta-N.W.T. Command.
Edmonton-Castle Downs MLA Nicole Goehring, Alberta’s liaison to the Canadian Armed Forces, announces the province’s $3-million investment in a new Veterans Service Centre and transitional housing project in Edmonton on Friday. (OMAR MOSLEH /STARMETRO EDMONTON)
Debbie Lowther, chair and co-founder of Veterans Emergency Transition Services Canada, speaks at the government’s announcement of a new Veterans Service Centre and transitional housing project in Edmonton on Friday. (OMAR MOSLEH /STARMETRO EDMONTON)
“There was no other contact. He was living in this hovel, just in absolutely deplorable conditions. And we were able to get some stability into his life, bring Veterans Affairs into play and get a disability pension for his military service recognized,” Finlay said.
Connecting veterans in crisis or at risk of homelessness with assistance such as financial aid, housing options, mental health programs, and employment and training services will now be much easier with the province’s announcement Friday of a “one-stop shop” Veterans Service Centre in north Edmonton.
It’s located steps away from a new transitional housing project specifically for veterans, in what is being hailed as a Canadian first.
“Alberta is leading the initiative on this,” said MLA Nicole Goehring, Alberta’s liaison to the Canadian Armed Forces, at the announcement. “I’m not aware of any other province that is doing this at this point.”
The apartment building, purchased and owned by the Alberta government, will house 15 homeless veterans as they prepare to make the move to permanent housing. The government has invested $3 million in the project, split between the apartment building and the service centre.
The service centre, expected to open before the end of the year, will be managed by Veterans Emergency Transition Services Canada, also known as VETS Canada. Edmonton was chosen as the service centre’s location because of the 246 veterans VETS Canada helped in Alberta last year, more than half were from Edmonton.
“I think what will really make this a success is that it will be a one-stop shop,” said Debbie Lowther, chair and co-founder of VETS Canada. “Veterans won’t have to travel all over the city to get the supports they require.”
That’s especially important for aging and injured veterans, who may have issues with mobility, or veterans with mental health challenges that make it hard to navigate the bureaucracy and paperwork needed to improve their lives.
VETS Canada will be hiring two full-time staff members to manage the centre, and there will be volunteers who are either serving members or veterans themselves to provide peer support.
“They don’t have to be homeless. They can still come in if they’re having difficulty dealing with Veterans Affairs Canada, if they’re having trouble with paperwork, if they’re having a struggle finding employment,” Lowther said.
Veterans are expected to begin moving into the apartment building in the coming months. As one of the project partners, the legion’s Alberta-N.W.T. Command has committed $75,000 to furnish the units.
Finlay said the announcement is a big step forward in helping veterans who are struggling.
“There’s a feeling of satisfaction for giving that individual a chance,” he said. “And housing for us is key — if you have that, you have a starting point.”
EDMONTON—A sunken scar runs from the bridge of Tim Senft’s nose to the crest of his cheek under his left eyelid. A veteran of the Gulf War, Senft’s most noticeable scars are not from combat — they’re from scraps on the street.
“What kind of dumbass would fight a soldier? You know I’m gonna get back up,” Senft says gruffly while puffing on a cigarette outside the Early Bird Café, an Edmonton diner that offers free coffee to local homeless folk in the early morning.
Tim Senft, a Gulf War veteran who has found himself homeless in Edmonton, stands at Peace Plaza on Thursday. Senft hopes Canadians who hear his story will take a moment to remember veterans more than once a year. (CODIE MCLACHLAN /STARMETRO EDMONTON)
Senft is a veteran of the United States Armed Forces who served for five months in Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Although he draws his ancestry back to Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, he was born in Edmonton and spent most of his life in York, Pa., with foster families after social services took him from his home when he was 3 due to his parents’ heavy drinking.
Senft is homeless, and while he survived the war, he still battles demons from his time in combat.
After returning to Canada from the U.S. in 2008, he bounced around the country before settling in Edmonton. He worked for some time at the now demolished York Hotel before losing his job and finding himself without stable housing since 2012.
It’s an issue that affects at least 2,950 homeless veterans nationwide, according to numbers published by VETS Canada based on a shelter count done by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness in 2015.
“That’s a really weak number compared to what we’re seeing,” said Jim Lowther, president and co-founder of VETS Canada, a national charity organization and service provider for Veteran Affairs Canada.
He estimates the actual number of homeless veterans is likely closer to 6,000 to 7,000, because only a fraction of homeless veterans spend their time in shelters, often couch-surfing or sleeping on the streets or in hotels.
Lowther said his organization has received more than 6,000 requests for housing assistance from veterans since 2014.
“We formed VETS Canada because we noticed there was a gap. We noticed these veterans were falling through the cracks and they really needed help,” Lowther said.
Veterans often contend with physical disabilities, which can present barriers to employment, undiagnosed mental health issues such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, challenges with substance abuse, and income insecurity. All of these factors contribute to veterans finding themselves homeless.
“Once they deem you unable to serve in the military, you’re done, your career is over. And that’s when the spiral starts,” Lowther said.
“When they get out and they wind up homeless or in crisis, it’s due to their military service,” he added. “Because they weren’t like that when they got in.”
Lowther, who did a tour in Bosnia in 1997, said his own PTSD was triggered five years after returning from combat. He remembers watching Behind Enemy Lines with his son when he suddenly had to run out of the movie theatre to throw up in a garbage can.
“I thought I dodged a bullet. I thought I was fine … You can only bury it for so long,” he said.
He struggled with nightmares, irritability and anxiety before seeing a doctor and getting diagnosed with chronic PTSD.
In Senft’s case, he had returned from his service in Saudi Arabia and was attending a parade dedicated to returning soldiers when he realized something was not right with him. Since then, he’s wrestled with depression, PTSD, as well as alcoholism.
“You try to still keep your chin up as a soldier, but you still have all this suffering in your head,” he said.
A separation from his wife Michelle and his son David is when his life began to really unravel. He turned to alcohol to numb his emotions.
“That destroyed me,” Senft said. “My life was falling apart. I was heavy into the alcohol. Seeing (my son’s) smile on his little face took away a lot of my pain. But I still kept drinking.”
Substance abuse is common among veterans to silence the noise in their head, especially when they’re lacking family support, Lowther said.
“When you’re having these nightmares and daydreams and you can’t sleep, you just want to try and stop that somehow … you want to try and numb that as much as you possibly can,” he said.
Gulf War veteran Tim Senft hopes, at the very least, that Canadians who hear his story will take a moment to remember veterans more than once a year. (CODIE MCLACHLAN/STARMETRO EDMONTON)
In addition to addictions and mental and physical disabilities, there’s also the fact that there’s not enough help to assist veterans with transferring their skills from the military into qualifications they can use for employment.
“When you go through boot camp, you are a highly effective, trained soldier. And when you get out … you don’t know how to be a civilian. And nor do you want to be one,” Lowther said.
David Krug, a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Legion’s Alberta-N.W.T. Command, said veterans with PTSD can be hesitant to reach out to organizations that request personal information. Part of that may be because of a military culture that teaches soldiers to fend for themselves.
“Interacting with organizations that might be requesting administrative info about them might put them into a situation they’re uncomfortable with,” he said.
“It can be mentally challenging to swallow one’s pride and say, ‘I need help’ ... And they may not feel they deserve the help,” Krug said.
Lowther doesn’t believe that is the case. He says veterans are more than willing to reach out for help, but government bureaucracy and red tape make it a long, arduous process.
“There’s just not a lot of help out there,” Lowther said. “When (veterans) reach out to Veterans Affairs, they get frustrated … they need help now, they don’t need help in two weeks.”
VETS Canada tries to fill in the void by helping veterans connect with doctors, look for apartments, fill out resumes, and retrain for employment. Meanwhile, the legion helps facilitate support groups and access to services and benefits they may not realize they’re entitled to.
“The incidence of veterans not necessarily knowing they may qualify for certain pensions or payouts is actually quite high,” Krug said.
There are many programs across the country working to help veterans acquire housing, employment and other necessary services. VETS Canada is partnering with an organization called Raising the Roof to renovate vacant and dilapidated properties into affordable housing for veterans. They currently have two projects underway in Ontario and are expanding the program across Canada.
In Calgary, the Alberta-N.W.T. Command joined forces with the Calgary Food Bank to operate an emergency food assistance program after a food bank specifically catering to veterans was shuttered. Now they’re working together so the food bank can refer veterans to the legion to address broader issues, such as a lack of mental health services.
“It allowed for greater interaction between the veterans themselves and the service officers to identify the wider challenges they’re facing, and to address those in a more holistic fashion,” Krug said.
Lowther said there are three pillars to getting veterans back on their feet: greater accessibility to mental health services, more money directed toward social housing specifically for veterans, and more programs to help equip them with skills for long-term employment.
“The government is doing better than they were, but they can definitely do more,” Lowther said. “I think people are busy with their lives and don’t realize how many veterans are suffering.”
In particular, he’d like to see the federal government step in and allocate money from the national housing strategy announced last year to housing for veterans.
“We have a national housing strategy, which is great, but organizations like mine need to have access to that money,” Lowther said, pointing out his group is largely volunteer-based and has helped get hundreds of veterans off the street.
One project he’s excited to be involved with is a newly announced veterans service centre in north Edmonton, located steps away from an apartment building purchased by the provincial government. The building will provide transitional housing for 15 homeless veterans, and is expected to open in 2019. The service centre will be run by VETS Canada, and it’s the first collaboration of this kind in Canada, Lowther said.
“Men and women who have served in the military make incredible sacrifices in the line of duty ... This new service centre and transitional housing will be key in helping ensure veterans at risk of homelessness have the supports they need,” said MLA Nicole Goehring, Alberta’s liaison to the Canadian Armed Forces.
Everyday Canadians also have a part to play. They can help by volunteering with organizations like VETS Canada, or donating to the many Poppy Funds that operate across the country.
Senft said he’s been working with local organizations to try to find housing, but so far, they haven’t been able to find him anything in Edmonton.
“They want to send me way the heck out to Stony Plain,” he said. “If I went there by myself, I’d be alone. That’s not good for me.”
Senft said he relies on his friends in Edmonton’s inner-city and the River Valley to get by, and still depends on alcohol to get through the days.
“It’s the only thing I have left to really keep me going,” he said.
Senft said he doesn’t blame anyone but himself for his circumstances, contending he hasn’t done enough to improve his living situation.
“I hope things get better, but I haven’t really done anything to make that happen,” he said. “So it’s kind of my fault.”
At the very least, Senft hopes Canadians who hear his story will take a moment to remember veterans more than once a year.
“Just recall your hard times. Because we’re still going through hard times. A veteran will never forget.”
City should honor veterans by waiving Transit fares on Remembrance Day
There is a common theme to the emails Free Press readers send to the City of Winnipeg website, addressed to Mayor Brian Bowman and CC’d to me.
"I’ve tried writing the mayor... and have never received a reply from him," retired Winnipeg Transit operator George Morrison said in an email.
Morrison is almost 60, but long before driving a city bus for more than 30 years, he was a sea cadet. His message to the mayor goes back to that life experience and an issue that’s become a sensitive subject for Morrison and other Transit operators:
"Dear Mr. Bowman. Once again as Remembrance Day approaches, I find it embarrassing that Winnipeg Transit will not be allowing free rides for veterans. Many cities across Canada are offering veterans and, in some cases, their traveling companions, free rides on their transit systems on Nov. 11. Some cities (Ottawa, in particular) are even offering free rides for the entire Veterans’ Week."
Morrison acknowledged Winnipeg offers some parking perks for veterans; however, Remembrance Day street parking is free to all. Obviously, it bothered him when he was behind the wheel of a bus and opened the door to veterans who were supposed to have their fare ready on Remembrance Day — and it still bothers him even after leaving the job.
His message to Bowman, written out of frustration, listed some of the other cities that have climbed on board the Nov. 11 transit free-ride salute to Canada’s veterans and in some cases, extended it to serving military and their families.
In 2006, as the Toronto Transit Commission was approving complimentary rides for "military veterans and peacekeepers," it undertook a survey to see what other cities were doing. The TTC discovered Vancouver, Ottawa and various municipal transit services in the Greater Toronto Area were granting free rides on Remembrance Day, some including companions and still-serving members.
That was more than a decade ago.
Halifax has joined the club. Edmonton, too.
Two years ago, just before Remembrance Day, Calgary city council approved free rides for veterans. Not surprisingly, it was a unanimous vote.
At the time, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi spoke with Calgary Transit operators to gauge the move’s potential impact. "They were not fussed about it anyway," he later told reporters.
Nenshi referenced the fare-free Remembrance Day in Halifax that extends to both veterans and current military personnel who show up in uniform or who present a military ID when boarding transit. Accompanying family members also ride free in the Nova Scotia capital.
In Calgary, they dispensed with an official test for identifying who is eligible, instead adopting the honor system to honor Canada’s veterans.
"I think we’ll just trust them," the mayor said. "If they’re in uniform and they’re wearing a poppy, I think the operator can just make that call."
The Calgary city councilor who introduced the motion explained why he did it: "This is not my idea," Sean Chu said. "Someone smarter than me on Twitter asked me: ‘Hey, maybe we should do this.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea.’"
In other words, he’s a politician who got the message, listened and responded.
Morrison said his idea for Winnipeg wasn’t listened to or even acknowledged — and so he reached out to the Free Press.
"Maybe this is something you might be interested in helping us get something done and offer a free ride to the veterans that have done so much for us," he wrote. "Why is it that we can let anyone that doesn’t want to pay a fare ride for free, but we insist that a veteran pay his way?"
Morrison was referring to the common practice — sanctioned by Winnipeg Transit — of operators not risking a confrontation over someone getting on the bus and not having the fare or simply refusing to pay.
On Monday morning, I emailed the city and asked why it hasn’t extended the same courtesy so many other cities have. It seems a small gift of respect that even Winnipeg’s two largest taxi services — Unicity and Duffy’s — have been offering free rides for veterans travelling to a Remembrance Day service and home again for the last two years. And they will again Saturday.
As of deadline, I was still waiting for a response from the City of Winnipeg. But by then, I already had an answer from someone else.
A still-employed Transit operator (a pal of Morrison’s), called to say he had asked the same question years ago, when Sam Katz was mayor. And as he recalled, the response was straightforward.
"Too costly and too complicated."
Too costly? Tell that to the families of the fallen and wounded warriors.
The bus driver said, over the years, he and other like-minded operators have developed their own way of showing veterans the respect the city hasn’t. They cover the fare box when they recognize a veteran boarding the bus.
Then, as if an explanation is needed, they tell him or her why: "You’ve already paid."
REMEMBRANCE DAY PARKING
While on-street parking is already complimentary on Remembrance Day, this year the Winnipeg Parking Authority will also be offering complimentary parking in the Millennium Library facility to vehicles bearing Manitoba veteran license plates.
Connected via through the Skywalk from City Place, the library facility offers an additional option for veterans attending the ceremony at the Convention Centre.
— source: Winnipeg Parking Authority
FREE TAXI RIDES FOR VETERANS
For the third consecutive year, military veterans can call either Duffy's or Unicity taxi companies -- and identify themselves as a veteran -- for a complimentary ride to and from Remembrance Day services in Winnipeg.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/edmonton/2018/11/09/alberta-investing-3m-into-new-service-centre-and-housing-for-homeless-veterans/vets.jpg)
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/edmonton/2018/11/09/alberta-investing-3m-into-new-service-centre-and-housing-for-homeless-veterans/vets_2.jpg)
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/edmonton/2018/11/09/for-thousands-of-veterans-living-on-the-street-in-canada-the-battle-isnt-over/_2e6a1987.jpg)
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/uploads/2018/11/09/senft-0.jpg)
