Frozen to death

Dickie Nelson froze to death in a tattered tent in Terrace, B.C., last December on a night when the temperature dipped to 22 C.

Nelson didnt intend to spend the night at the blustery homeless tent encampment near the railway tracks nearly 600 kilometres west of Prince George.

But his sister, Diana Guno, thinks he came back that night to check on friends who were sleeping outside. It was that cold.

City bylaw officers found Nelson, a former commercial fishing deckhand, the next morning frozen to death inside the white canvas tent. He was 54.

The ramshackle tent city was located on the site of Terraces former Co-op building. It was the de facto home to a dozen or more homeless residents.

Three months after the Tsimshian-Nisgaa mans death, the tent encampment has been torn down. There are a few clues that people lived here. Pieces of clothing and a shoe are scattered on the ground. A green and white porta potty stands in the empty parking lot. There are black patches on the ground where fires once burned.

Nelsons story reflects a growing problem in northern B.C.: more homeless people have been showing up in Terrace and most of them are Indigenous. Theyre also found living outside in other small towns across northern B.C. While some relief is on the horizon, homeless people still face hostility rather than empathy from some locals. That leads one to wonder if theyll face future sub-zero winters in homeless camp tents or inside shelters.

Gravel crunches as a car pulls into the driveway of Diana Gunos house in Terrace. She lets out a greeting in the doorway.

Welcome to our territory, the unceded territory of the Tsimshian people, she says. Welcome to our home.

In Gunos front room, the walls are covered with family photos. The largest picture is one of Nelson. By the main window, Christmas presents remain in their bags waiting to be distributed, including one for him.

Guno was Dickie Nelsons only sister. He was the fourth child of Lloyd and Marge Nelson, and had two older brothers as well. Lloyd was Tsimshian and a member of the Kitsumkalum First Nation in Terrace.

Guno describes her brother as kind, caring, loud and most of all brave.

When Nelson was 10, he was fishing with a homemade pole, line and a hook with other children at a river near their home. Someone standing nearby cast a line and the hook went through Nelsons ear lobe.

One of the gentlemen came and he used wire cutters to cut it off, Guno said of her younger brothers reaction. He never flinched, never.

Lloyd Nelson worked as a commercial fisherman and was often away fishing, Guno said. His wife worked as a net mender and was often busy. With the parents both working, that left Guno to care for her younger brother. This early rearing forged a deep bond that lasted throughout Nelsons life.

Nelson eventually fished with his father, and theyd spend days on the water together. He was close to his mother as well. His father died in 2012. His mother died a year later.

Nelson never overcame the sorrow of his parents deaths, Guno said. He consoled his grief with alcohol, and ended up homeless, wandering from Prince Rupert, Prince George and finally to Terrace, where he was generally sleeping.

Nelson had two serious relationships. He married his second wife, Margaret, and was close to her children from a previous relationship. The couple separated but he remained cordial with all of them. The couple talked about reconciling, but tragedy struck when Margaret fell ill and died in 2021.

He really missed our parents. And then hed nod: I really miss Margaret, Guno said. He told me all the time. He missed her. He missed her as much as he missed our parents.

Nelson wasnt alone while homeless. He found kinship with other homeless Indigenous people in Terrace. They were outcasts from neighbouring Indigenous communities: Tsimshian, Gitxsans, Nisgaa, Wetsuweten and others. They became their own family, Guno said.

He was their street dad [because] he was so tall and so hefty and so loud you cant pick on them.

Pauline Fowler, 25, lives mostly in the Ksan shelter in Terrace.

Speaking from the damp sidewalk on a rainy morning outside the shelter, she talked about herself and about Nelson.

As a child, shed been removed from her birth family and placed with a non-Indigenous one. She said she found community and friendship with the homeless people on the street, things she found lacking in her own life. She felt a connection with her new people, Nelson especially.

Dickie was like a father figure to me, he was a mentor, Fowler said.

Nelson brought together people in the camp who were otherwise alone and unwanted.

Hes the one that started this whole Were a family. He was just the greatest guy ever, Fowler said. And honestly, I knew that he played a great part in this community. I didnt know how great of a part he played until he was gone.

Dec. 21, 2022, was shaping up to be one of the coldest days in the North.

Guno is unsure of her brothers movements that day. She said she last saw him a few days before. They spoke briefly, and he ended the conversation the way he always did with her.

He was telling me: I love you, Anne, she said. [He] always called me Anne.

Those were his last words to her.

Guno said she understands that Nelson loaned his jacket to someone who needed one earlier in the day. That night, he may have gone out not wearing one, looking for people who never went to the shelter. But no one went looking for him. It was -22 C.

He went to the homeless camp, but it isnt certain whether he found the person he may have been looking for, Guno said. She thinks he went to his tent to warm up, lay down and went to sleep. He never reawakened. City bylaw officers doing a safety check at the camp discovered his body the next day.

Its unknown why Nelson never went back to the shelter that night.

A communications person with Ksan shelter said there was a bed available for Nelson that night.

Guno said the coroner told her by phone that Nelson died of hypothermia. The coroner wouldnt confirm this to the CBC, saying the investigation is ongoing.

The RCMP said they found nothing suspicious about Nelsons death.

Rural homelessness is increasingly a central challenge for municipalities in B.C. In the community of Terrace, population 12,000, 84 residents were counted as homeless in April through a study conducted by volunteers and staff at the Ksan Society.

It represents an increase of 10 from the year previous.

Terrace Mayor Sean Bujtas says the community now faces rates of homelessness that are twice that of Metro Vancouver. In Terrace, about 0.6 per cent of the population was counted as homeless. In Vancouver, the 2,095 homeless residents represent 0.08 per cent of the citys overall population.

According to the Ksan Society, homelessness is undercounted. The report from 2022 notes that Terrace is surrounded by mountain slopes, thick with trees, and authors of the homeless count say they act as a refuge for those who seek seclusion and privacy. People living in those wooded areas are not counted.

Nor are those who bounce between precarious living situations, returning to the streets when they run out of options.

As the number of people suffering homelessness trends upwards, city Coun. James Cordiero said hes also noticed a shift in the public discourse, online and in person.

Ive seen a lot of comments on Facebook and other places, and comments and attitudes have definitely started to shift into a more negative way of looking at people, Cordiero said at a council meeting on Sept. 26, 2022.

It was at that same meeting where some members of the community came to council chambers to express those ideas in person.

It began with a petition opposing a homeless shelter, signed by 352 residents of Terrace and delivered by Kyle de Medeiros, a lifelong resident and father of two.

The petition sparked backlash, and as tempers flared, RCMP were called to city hall.

The petition demanded the City of Terrace block plans for the Ksan Society to move their wet shelter to a new location to allow for expanded capacity.

Ksan Society says this shelter serves anyone, regardless of whether they are believed to be under the influence of substances.

Property values are directly affected because of proximity to the shelter. Vehicle break-ins, destruction of property, thefts and public displays of intoxication and drug use are an everyday event, reads the petition.

But, as council members pointed out, the building at the new location is owned by Ksan and already zoned correctly for use as a shelter, so the petition went nowhere. The new location is now under renovation and scheduled to open in the near future.

A small group of supporters of the shelter sat in the council gallery while the petition was delivered.

Audio and video recordings of the meeting indicate that after de Medeiros concluded, the group began to file out when one member, Billy Morrison, spoke up out of turn.

The opposite of addiction is love and connection why arent we talking about safe supply?

He was admonished by the mayor at the time, Carole Leclerc, and RCMP were called.

Later in the meeting, a supporter of the petition threatened to harm people he called junkies if he found them on his property.

These guys come into my yard and try to rip me off so they can go buy drugs and alcohol. Thats not going to fly, he said, characterizing homeless people as a dangerous nuisance akin to bears in his hometown of Prince George.

As far as bringing this problem into my neighbourhood its like a bad bear problem. When you got a bad bear problem, they get relocated or shot.

CBC requested an interview with de Medeiros but he declined.

The colonial history of Terrace looms large and close. Terrace sits on the unceded ancestral lands of the Tsimshian Nation and acts as a hub for service and supplies for many First Nations and rural communities in the northwest.

The city of Terrace is flanked by two reserves Kitselas to the east and Kitsumkalum, Nelsons home community, to the west.

Terrace has got one of the largest per capita First Nations populations [in B.C.], which in turn means that we have one of the largest per capita trauma for residential schools, said Bujtas.

Of the 84 who were counted as homeless in Terrace last year by the Ksan Society, about 80 per cent were Indigenous. Even in a city with a significant Indigenous population at 25 per cent, its a stark overrepresentation.

As the need for services balloons, so do the stakes. More people experiencing homelessness died in 2021 than any other year going back at least a decade, figures from the BC Coroners Service show. Provincially, 247 people who were identified as homeless died. The statistics for 2022 have not been released, but Nelson will be counted among those who died.

That reality is leading many to call for urgent action and turn their attention to solutions.

Bujtas said his small community struggles to command attention from the various levels of government. The municipality, he said, is poor and accounts for such a small percentage of the provincial population that it can be hard to lobby the government.

But, he noted, he has powerful neighbours and theyre not waiting for the province to act.

In 2021, a coalition of northwest First Nations formed the Northern First Nations Alliance. One of their goals was to address the lack of services for mental health and addiction in their region.

The NFNA, which includes representatives from the Haisla, Kitkatla, Kitselas, Kisumkalum and Nisgaa Nations, is forging ahead with plans for a healing and treatment centre in the Terrace area.

For many, Bujtas said the closest option for detox and treatment is Prince George - almost 600 kilometres to the east.

People are dying and we have to start caring about them.

Back at Gunos house, we depart and drive north towards the Nass Valley, home of the Nisgaa, Nelsons mothers people.

After five minutes, there are more trees than houses along the road. Atop a hill at the end of a short, winding road sits the Terrace municipal graveyard.

The stillness there is broken only by the scrunching of snow beneath shoes. The quiet of the graveyard is a stark contrast to the noisy homeless camp that once sat adjacent to a railyard.

That was Nelsons home. This is his final resting place. The small, square grave entombing his cremated remains sits at the foot of his parents graves. Its as though each of them are holding him by a hand as he begins this new journey.

Guno was the last to view him before his cremation. She said he had a small smile. They [her parents] took my brother, he was cold, she said. They said: Lets go home. So they took them home. Thats what I say in my heart.

Nelson froze to death homeless, living in a tent on lands his First Nation called home for millennia. He was always looking out for others, but that night no one looked out for him.

Hes in the glory lands, said Guno. Im never ever going to forget my brother. Never.

Clarification

An earlier version of this story said that when Billy Morrison spoke at a city council meeting, he was admonished by the mayor. The mayor at the time was Carole Leclerc, not Sean Bujtas, who is Terraces mayor today. April 6, 2023 4 p.m. ET

Credits

Written by: Kate Partridge and Wawmeesh Hamilton | Edited by: Janet Davison | Photography by: Maggie MacPherson | Digital Producer: Althea Manasan | Senior Digital Producer: Brandie Weikle