I am sitting here in the sunshine this morning looking at the flowers and listening to the birds chirping, the wind chimes tinkling, the mourning dove calling and feeling….nothing but so much residual grief and heavy sadness from news received 2 days ago.

I live in a small city in Eastern Ontario. Just a little over 40,000 people, many of whom are seniors. On June 2 our health unit and the police put out a warning about an increase in overdoses in Cornwall. This is nothing new. The last one was in April. In reading I found out they were referring to 5 incidents that happened on June 1st. One at 3 pm and FOUR at 6 pm. ALL AT THE SAME HOUSE. The house according to the comments by people who live on the street and who saw the events take place is where a known dealer lives. No one was taken in for questioning. Nothing, beyond 5 bodies taken away by ambulance, happened.

In speaking to my next door neighbour about the incidents she told me that her 21 year old cousin had died from toxic drug poisoning in 2021. She said the young woman had died on the dealer’s bathroom floor, that he was her ex-boyfriend. She gave his first name. I asked for his last. When she told me I was aghast.

It was the same dealer who sold my daughter her toxic drugs. The same one who sent her a text the day after she died laughing about the “blue bomb” he sold her. The same one she had a semi-romantic relationship with (according to info from her phone) until he beat her up in April, a couple of months before she died. The same one that she texted a friend about saying that he threatened to kill her. Then she stayed away from him for awhile but that July contacted him again.

WELL…my neighbour’s cousin wasn’t the first girl. There had been another previously, who also died. And a second one, who they managed to revive but now lives in a wheelchair.

If this is his pattern…I’m sure my daughter won’t be the last. Because he’s still out there. And I can’t help it, I look for him every time I walk out my door.

I have to fight with myself not to park outside his house. It’s a struggle not to imagine what I would do to him if I ever laid my hands on him. The police have done nothing. How many more girls will die?

And that house, where the 5 overdoses occurred in a 3 hour time span?

There are no resources here.

We have no detox. No safe consumption site. No safe supply program. We have a methadone clinic and a weekly mobile unit. That’s it. So people have very few options. And I know that when my daughter first relapsed she was approached at her methadone clinic. A regulated safe supply may well have kept my daughter alive, by keeping her from getting drugs from the dealer.

The police do nothing. The OPP/CPS joint task force does nothing.

Nobody DOES ANYTHING!

NOBODY CARES! It’s as if my daughter and these others don’t even matter.

But of course they do! They lived and they breathed and they loved and they laughed. And their lives were senselessly and needlessly cut short.

I am so angry

And sad

And tired

Signed, a MSTH member Mom