Rupert Hotel Fire - 31 Years Ago

Wednesday December 23rd marks the 31st anniversary of the terrible fire at Toronto’s Rupert Hotel.

This past November the City of Toronto took steps to come up with new regulations that would be part of a comprehensive city-wide regulatory framework for multi-tenant houses.  

These regulations would be developed using a human rights lens thus “ensuring regulatory oversight to protect tenant life safety and create liveable,  well-maintained and affordable places to live.” 

You can read a report that talks about this process at http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2020.PH18.2 

This is good news.  Hopefully new polices will be in place soon. 

Meanwhile many in our province continue to live in perilous and dangerous conditions like those that I wrote about last year in Rupert Hotel December 1989*. 

---------------

                         Rupert Hotel December 1989*

         Gordon was sorry

         but it was tough keeping warm

         and he’d had some to drink 

         so setting fire to those papers on the floor in the middle 

         of his second-floor room made some kind of sense.

         At the Rupert Hotel, a three-storey brick walk up 

         in a licensed city rooming house 

         off Queen Street East 

         at Parliament

         those with few options and few dollars could exist, 

         in a way. 

         Gordon’s warming fire soon leapt out of control 

         flames and choking smoke filling the corridors 

         as the fire gained full possession of the hallways.

         The license pinned to the wall wasn’t worth the paper 

         it was printed on as far as the protection it afforded 

         the 31 tenants at the Rupert

         on this wintry December night. 

 

         A sprinkler system might have halted the fire’s progress.

         Perhaps tenants could have taken action 

         if the alarm system had been operable 

         or fire extinguishers stored in the basement were reachable.

 

         It was 17 long minutes before someone called 911.

         When firefighters arrived 

         the whole building was enveloped. 

         Flames leapt out of the top floor windows.

         Firefighters using ladders forced their way 

         into the searing heat of the second floor.  

         Later a witness called it 

         “A Vision out of Hell.”

         As the fire raged people screamed, crying out for friends.

         It took six hours and eighteen crews to subdue the blaze.

         Thankfully, some tenants were saved and many escaped. 

         For days crews chopped through ice and debris to locate bodies. 

         They found nine men. 

         A woman had returned to the building to help a friend 

         Donna Marie Cann died, as had the others, 

         of heavy smoke inhalation.

        Soon an inquest was held.

        Recommendations were made    

        new rules created 

        regulations established

        housing planned.

        After a while all was forgotten.

        Rules and regulations lapsed, 

        were ignored or opposed 

        and the programs ended.

        In the city today austerity policies 

        compel people to rent rooms 

        in perilous and dangerous buildings. 

        Many flee the downtown to illegal suburban homes 

        where life is cheaper.

*According to the Fire Marshal, there were fires at 69 illegal rooming houses in the Toronto area between 2013 and 2017.

----------

Rupert Hotel December 1989* was published earlier this year in Literature for the People (Editor Raymond Fenech) and received honourable mention in the Norfolk Literary Prize competition.

Street Soccer Championships in Hamilton This Month

This story orignally appeared in North End Breezes, the community newsletter of Hamilton's North End. http://www.northendbreezes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/July-Summer-2015-NEB-publisher-smaller-file.pdf-final.pdf)

A unique event is coming to Hamilton this month.
Street Soccer Canada will be running the National Homeless Championship. The games will be played in Gore Park on Saturday July 18th and Sunday the 19th.  Teams from Comox, Kelowna, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton and other cities are expected.
Players from this competition will be selected for the Homeless World Cup. 

That event will be held in Amsterdam this September.

In 2003, Mel Young, a Scotsman, and Harald Schmied, an Austrian, were attending a conference dealing with the future of street newspapers.  They came up with the idea of a Homeless World Cup. 

It is a different game than the traditional soccer (football) you’ll see at the Pan Am Games.

It is played four players a side on 16 metre x 22 metre court.  The game lasts 14 minutes (two seven minute halves.) A three-on-two rule, intended to promote scoring, has evolved so that only two players are allowed in their own defensive end.

To be eligible, players must have been homeless in the past year (in accordance with the national definition of homelessness,) make their living as street paper vendor, be Asylum seekers or in drug or alcohol rehabilitation (and also have been homeless.)

Changing Attitudes

The Homeless World Cup is more than a competition. It is designed to challenge societal attitudes towards homeless people.

In that context it is worth reflecting on the situation in Hamilton.

Here, over 3,100 individuals experienced homelessness – staying at some point in the past year in one of the City’s emergency shelters.

Hamilton is part of a national movement of communities led by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. The movement is mobilizing people to house 20,000 of Canada’s most vulnerable people by July 1, 2018.  As part of that program, individual and families were interviewed this April. Four hundred and fifty four (454) individuals were canvassed by volunteers in Hamilton’s downtown streets, shelters and agencies.

Here are just a few facts from the survey that may surprise you.

• Two thirds of those interviewed had experienced homelessness for six months or longer.

• Seven percent of those surveyed had served in the Canadian Armed Forces.

• 266 of the individuals surveyed had visited hospital emergency rooms a total of 994 times in the previous 6 months.

Much work has to be done to solve our housing crisis.  Unlike other nations, Canada doesn’t have a national housing strategy.  Perhaps, we will hear about housing and homelessness during this fall’s federal election campaign.