Montreal homeless shelter sees 8 overdoses within an hour

Residents and staff at a homeless shelter in downtown Montreal are reeling after eight community members suffered overdoses on Sunday.

Police say it's unclear if the victims were all using the same substance, but the overdoses occurred back-to-back. While seven victims are considered stable Monday morning, one woman is still in critical condition.

Emergency services were first called to the corner of St-Dominique and Ontario Streets around 4:10 p.m., half a block from the Projets Autochtones du Québec (PAQ) shelter.

Workers at the shelter, located inside the Hôtel des Arts, administered the opioid antidote naloxone before paramedics arrived.

Four of the six victims were rushed to hospital. One of them, a 42-year-old woman, is still fighting for her life.

A second incident occurred about an hour later inside the shelter itself. According to PAQ executive director Heather Johnston, two men suffered overdoses but were stable when they arrived at the hospital.

Johnston said the shelter's occupants and staff were "traumatized" and "devastated" by the day's events.

"It was a real shock," she told CTV News, describing the shelter as a tight-knit community.

"There's a lot of support between people. There's often family and friends who are all together, either at the shelter or hanging out on the street," she said. "When something like that happens, yeah, there's a real shock."

Jean-Sébastien Fallu, an associate professor at the Université de Montréal's School of Psychoeducation, called the situation "a public health crisis," adding, "we need to do something to stop this."

"We know what we have to do in order to stop this, and it's not mandatory treatment, and it's not enough just to provide drug checking, safe injection sites, which are important. But that's not enough. We need to provide people with a safer supply," he said.

Shelter worker Hamde Mohammed said drug issues in the area have intensified recently.

"It's been like one year now, we've had lot of fentanyl going around this area, especially downtown," he said.

Johnston agrees. She said there's been an increase in "dirty drugs" and overdoses in the shelter over the past year.

"The homelessness crisis, the housing crisis, they all go together, it's hand-in-hand. These are big-picture, systemic problems that need dialogue and discussion and partnerships at all levels."

In a statement, Montreal's public health department confirmed it's investigating the overdoses: "We are conducting this survey in collaboration with several partners in order to fully characterize the situation and the risk to the population."

According to data from Montreal's public health department, there were 11 overdoses reported to public health authorities in August, the highest number in a single month since October 2020. There were 172 deaths from overdoses during the 12-month period ending March 31, 2023. Meanwhile, there were 134 in the previous year and 170 deaths during the same period in 2020-21.

Among those deaths, the coroner's office found traces of fentanyl in 42 cases during the 2022-23 period, according to preliminary public health data. In 2021-22, there were 46 deaths linked to fentanyl, up from 29 the year before and 11 in 2019-20.

With files from The Canadian Press