Community memorial honours unhoused Indigenous lives at Montreal’s Cabot Square

A public memorial was held Friday at Montreal’s Cabot Square to honour unhoused community members who have died amid what organizers describe as a deepening housing crisis and severe shortages in emergency shelters.

Resilience Montreal and the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal say or than 32 people who have used their services have died in the past 18 months, with 80 per cent of them being Indigenous.

Organizers say the deaths reflect the strain of overcrowded shelters and underfunded infrastructure needed to support the city’s unhoused.

“We continually, month after month, raise the concern that if adequate resources aren’t there, we do more memorials,” said David Chapman, executive director of Resilience Montreal.

Among those attending was Annisee Papyarlur, whose sister Lucy died in March.

“I still think about her. Thinking that she’s going to show up,” she said with tears in her eyes in front of a crowd of over a hundred.

Papyarlur was just one of many family members attending the memorial. 

Another attendee, a mother who requested to remain anonymous, came to remember her daughter who died of an overdose in 2020 while they were separated.

“I didn’t have a funeral,” she said. “So (this is) my funeral.”

Speaking to reporters, Chapman said the scale of loss has accelerated quickly. Resilience’s last memorial, held in June, honoured 37 deaths over the course of three years. That puts the number of people remembered during Friday’s commemoration at almost the same total in half the time.

“Sadly, we keep doing this year after year,” Chapman said.

Organizers like David Chapman of Resilience Montreal say the mounting housing crisis, lack of emergency shelter space, barriers to health care and systemic discrimination have created conditions that are increasingly deadly for those living on the streets.

Dangers like overdoses, he said, are increased when infrastructure like shelters are unable to tide over unhoused people from being on the streets to accessing affordable housing.

“We could say, ‘Oh, it’s great. We’re going to have housing for the homeless down the road in the future sometime,'” Chapman said. “Well, dead people don’t go into housing.”

The memorial comes as newly elected mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada recently announced that addressing homelessness is her number-one priority.

But Chapman, who says his organization is running under zero with little support, believes urgent government action is still missing.

“When governments don’t commit, we’re picking up the pieces,” said Chapman.

And for people like Dr. Stephanie Marsan, who took care of many, being honoured on Friday, the gathering is about remembering the connection she shared with them.

“That’s a huge privilege and honour that I’ve been able to actually sit with them and just have conversations and laugh with them,” she said.