HIGHLANDER INVESTIGATES

The Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge district health unit (HKPR) has pegged the living wage for the region at $20.60 per hour in a recent report addressing local food insecurity and poverty – though Joli Scheidler-Benns of the City of Kawartha Lakes Haliburton Poverty Reduction Roundtable believes that number is “way, way off.”

Each year, the health unit updates its statistics on incomes and the cost of food and rent in Kawartha Lakes, Haliburton County, and Northumberland County – providing a snapshot of how, and where, people are struggling.

A key component of the study is monitoring food affordability and accessibility using the provincial nutritious food basket (NFB) tool. The health unit says the cost of the NFB across HKPR helps show the link between healthy eating and family income in the area.

It also looks at average monthly rents using rental listings from online marketplaces and newspapers. In its report, HKPR says anyone spending more than 30 per cent of their income on accommodation is likely living in poverty.

Government, community leaders must do more

It considered various scenarios – at the top end, a family of four with a median monthly income of $9,290 were found to spend 26 per cent of their income on rent ($2,391 for a three-bedroom) and 13 per cent on NFB foods ($1,184), leaving $5,715 for other basic needs. This demographic was the only one in the report to be above the poverty line.

A family of four with minimum wage earners brings in $4,166 monthly – spending 57 per cent on rent and 28 per cent on NFB, leaving $591. A senior living on old age security rakes in $1,996 monthly and spends 73 per cent on rent ($1,451 for a one-bedroom) and 15 per cent on NFB ($307 for a single person), giving them $238 for other essentials.

At the lowest end of the scale, a single person living on Ontario Works receives a maximum monthly income of $868. With average one-bedroom rentals at $1,451, or 167 per cent of an OW recipient’s income, and NFB costs taking another 49 per cent, they’re already $1,008 in the hole before accounting for any other cost.

“People are really struggling,” ScheidlerBenns said. “When you factor in the cost of rentals alone, if you can even find one, our lowest earners and people enrolled in programs like OW and ODSP just don’t have a chance.”

In its report, the health unit stated 12.9 per cent of County households are considered low-income. The poverty roundtable, in a 2021 release, estimated that number at closer to 17.9 per cent.

Scheidler-Benns believes the situation today is even more challenging.

“My guess is the numbers have increased. Part of the challenge with statistics is the numbers are usually around 15 months out of date by the time they’re released. Prices have gone up drastically since then, for pretty much everything – food, housing, fuel, heating… those on fixed incomes are trapped.”

There hasn’t been an increase to OW rates since 2018. Those on ODSP saw marginal increases – five per cent in September 2022 and 6.5 per cent in July 2023, but the maximum people receive through that program is $1,308 per month – which doesn’t even cover the cost of a rental today.

Lived experience

Forty-year-old Haliburton resident Angie Wilson has been living on ODSP for much of her adult life. Born in British Columbia, but raised in the Highlands, Wilson moved back to the County in 2013, after a few years in Barrie. She needed somewhere more affordable to raise her three children.

She was comfortable for a few years, but around 2017 – when cost of living started to increase – the struggle set in. With the walls closing in, Wilson found salvation through Places for People – a County-based nonprofit committed to providing affordable housing to those in need.

Wilson was given a three-bedroom apartment in Haliburton village at a reduced rate of $906 per month.

“I would have been screwed without Places for People. They have saved my life more than once. I would have lost my kids multiple times over if they didn’t step in when they did,” Wilson said.

Two of her children have since come of age and moved out – drastically changing Wilson’s income. She receives money from ODSP and child support for her 15-year-old daughter, but with costs rapidly rising over the past 18 months, and Wilson’s monthly intake dropping by around $1,000, she said she’s struggling to keep her, and her daughter’s head above water.

She recently took a roommate, her uncle, and while that’s provided some respite – helping to cover the cost of basic necessities – Wilson said she feels trapped. “The depressing, hopeless thing for me is I know there’s no future. I don’t have anything to look forward to. Once my youngest daughter gets older I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Wilson said – noting her only income will be her monthly ODSP cheque.

“I still have those costs, because you’re always going to help your kids as much as you can. But I’ll be spending more than half my income on rent. And I’m one of the lucky ones, already living in subsidized housing.”

Services stretched

Janine Mitchell, manager, human services with the City of Kawartha Lakes – which delivers social services to County residents – said, as of Sept. 2023, her department is assisting 255 people from the County on OW.

They also support low-income working households. The minimum wage in Ontario is currently $16.55 per hour. In a recent report to CKL council, Mitchell said single workers, or single worker families, working full-time on minimum wage bring in $30,121 annually. Using the health unit’s $20.60 living wage, full-time workers would bring in $37,492.

“The idea when minimum wage was first introduced was that one parent heading off to work could comfortably cover a household’s costs – that’s just not possible anymore,” Mitchell said.

The demand for social housing is greater than it’s ever been. The Kawartha Lakes Haliburton Housing Corporation is responsible for managing the local program. Aaron Mulcaster, program supervisor, said there are 429 households on the waitlist for community housing in the County.

He said 101 households have been on the waitlist less than a year. “A few” have been waiting 10 years or more.

Mulcaster said KLH has found housing for 27 County families since Jan. 1, 2023.

With costs rising across the board, more people than ever before are turning to food banks for support. Jean Munroe, executive director of the Minden Community Food Centre, said demand for service increased 27 per cent in 2022 and 35 per cent in 2023. It’s been a similar story through the first half of 2024, she said.

Barbara, who asked that her last name not be published, said she’s been relying on the Minden food bank for years. Also living on ODSP, Barbara said around half of her monthly income goes towards rent. After heat, hydro and other necessities she said that leaves her with next to nothing for groceries.

“Nobody wants to go to the food bank, we go there because we have to. I’d starve if it wasn’t for them,” Barbara said. “It’s not a nice way to live – I don’t have much, don’t get to do much. It’s just survival at this point.”

The Central Food Network, which operates food banks in Cardiff and Wilberforce, reported a 37 per cent increase in demand across the two sites in 2023. Tina Jackson, CFN executive director, fears people are struggling more than ever before – estimating a similar, if not greater, demand through the first half of 2024.

Judy MacDuff, manager of the 4Cs food bank in Haliburton, said demand increased about 28 per cent in 2022 and 31 per cent in 2023. With a similar increase likely for 2024, the Haliburton facility will be serving double the number of clients it did in 2021.

The children

The health unit estimates 25 per cent of children in the Highlands are living in poverty. Marg Cox, executive director of Point in Time, said that number is shocking but not surprising.

“I would say we deal with it every day – whether it’s a young child, youth, or older teenager. We’re trying to help them as much as we can,” Cox said.

Point in Time has partnered with Haliburton Foodland to collect food donations it can pass on to families in need. It also receives frozen meals from SIRCH Community Services. Occasionally, Cox said they’ll use cash or gift cards to buy food for people in a real crunch.

She estimates they’re assisting between 150 and 200 people per month.

Cox believes most service providers are already doing everything they can to help people. Real change, she says, needs to come from the different levels of government.

“The gap between the haves and have nots continues to widen… this is Canada we’re living in. It’s not supposed to be a place where people go hungry. And we know that people are,” Cox said. “I remember there being a campaign years ago, groups talking about ending poverty by the year 2000. I think we’re further away from that than ever before.

“It takes governments and community leaders making it a priority to come together and really figure out, together, how to deal with this issue. That hasn’t really happened yet,” Cox added.

Red Umbrella Inn owner Ziad Halasah was working in the office July 8 when he noticed one of his staff fly past in a vehicle. He was a bit surprised by the speed so went out to see what was going on.

The sight of a truck used for plowing engulfed in flames was naturally “unexpected” as was the plume of black smoke pouring into the air.

The fire, in the parking lot across from the inn, was also a worry as they store a lot of items in the area for people, including ice racing cars, and sailboats. Guests also use the lot to park their cars. There was a fence and home just to the north of the blaze on a hot day with wind.

A call was placed to 9-1-1 while inn staff tried their best to extinguish the truck and move items, including a large house trailer, out of the line of fire.

The first fire crew arrived from Algonquin Highlands, quickly followed by crews from Dysart and Minden Hills.

Minden Hills fire chief Don Kruger said the original call went to Algonquin Highlands and Dysart, with Minden getting its page around 2:30 p.m. Minden was out on another call for a vehicle in the ditch at the time.

“All three fire departments were on scene at one point,” he said.

“I guess the owner of the Red Umbrella Inn had somebody moving a plow truck out of the field.” Kruger said the person saw smoke in the cab, “and the vehicle went up in flames.”

He said flames were spreading through the grass; a snowmobile in the bush went up; and they were moving towards the house and trailer, along with other items.

“Fortunately, the fire crews were able to get there quick enough and prevent it from spreading beyond the vehicle and the little bit of grass there,” he said. “There was the potential for it to be much more than it was, fortunately, it was just a run-of-the-mill vehicle fire.” He confirmed there were no injuries. He estimated about 20 volunteer firefighters attended.

But it was far from ordinary for Halasah, who expressed relief no one was hurt and thanked volunteer firefighters for getting the situation under control quickly.

“I’m grateful to these people for what they do,” he said.

Rather than be ticked off they couldn’t pick up their favourite bottle of liquor from the Haliburton LCBO, several would-be customers hammered their car horn and bellowed messages of support for staff walking the picket line along Highland Street July 5.

Last Friday was the first day on strike for Ontario liquor store employees, with more than 9,000 workers walking off the job following a breakdown in negotiations between the LCBO and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).

Guy Alaimo, manager of the Haliburton LCBO, said it’s the first time liquor store employees have been on strike in Ontario. “The issue is a lot more than just wages – yes, money is a part of it, but the biggest issue for me and most of my employees is job security,” Alaimo told The Highlander.

He estimates around 70 per cent of the LCBO workforce are casual employees, who aren’t guaranteed hours and rarely receive benefits. He noted these workers only qualify for benefits after working at least 6,000 hours, which Alaimo estimated would take five or six years.

The latest offer, rejected by employees July 4, leading to the strike action, was for employees to receive a 2.5 per cent wage increase and LCBO to make an additional five per cent of workers full-time.

“Right now, 30 per cent of the workforce is full-time. They’re offering to bump that up to 35 per cent, but we want more than that,” Alaimo said. “The wage increase we’re asking for isn’t huge – we just want them to meet us on inflation, meet us somewhere fair.”

While Alaimo didn’t share how much workers were hoping to get, he pegged inflation and increase in cost of living at around seven per cent.

The Haliburton store typically has between eight and 10 active employees – four of them full-time, including Alaimo. He’s worked there for 10 years and considers himself one of the lucky ones.

“I started as a fixed-term employee, then went casual and became full-time very fast. In most areas in and around the city, you can become full-time working at LCBO after seven or eight years. It’s different here. In these small towns, to get a full-time position with benefits, I know some ladies who took 20 or 25 years to get that,” he said.

The strike is set to run until July 19, but Alaimo said stores will reopen earlier if an agreement is reached. With staff earning $50 per day on the picket line – much less than their usual take home – the local manager hopes the standoff won’t stretch into a second week.

It’s going to take some concession from the Ontario Government, though. One of the major sticking points in negotiations thus far has centred on the proposed expansion of alcohol sales in grocery stores and other outlets. While beer and wine has been readily accessible for several years, there has been talk of making liquor and ready-to-drink cocktails available too.

Alaimo feels that would be a mistake.

“Right now, about $2.5 billion per year goes right back to the Ontarian people as a dividend from the LCBO. If we move further and further into the privatization of alcohol sales, that money will be gone. It’ll go into the pockets of big business,” Alaimo said. “The system we have now is great. There’s no reason for change.”

All 680 LCBO stores in Ontario – including ones across the County – remained closed as of press time, though free home delivery is available. If the strike lasts longer than two weeks, LCBO says it will open 32 stores three days a week, from Friday to Sunday, with limited hours – though it has not disclosed locations.

On the phone from Prince Edward County, Linwood Barclay is asked for his advice to Haliburton County authors, other than his standard read and write.

“When you show what you’ve written to your mom, or your husband, and they say ‘it’s wonderful’, don’t believe them. Because what else can they say? What are they going to tell you? ‘This needs work’,” the author of 24 novels and counting shares.

“It’s tough, but if doing it gives you pleasure – and your dream isn’t necessarily to hit the Globe and Mail bestseller list – but you find it’s relaxing, or it allows you to work things through, just keep doing it. But being able to make a living in this kind of business is rare.”

Barclay is one of those rare novelists, and the former journalist with the Toronto Star and Peterborough Examiner is coming to Minden July 13.

He gets lots of event requests and gets to pick and choose which he attends. He selected Minden as it’s close to his “old stomping grounds,” living for years just south of Bobcaygeon. His family owned Green Acres, a cottage rental and trailer park on the west side of Pigeon Lake.

“This is not heavy lifting to come up and do this,” he said.

He shared how his dad died when he was 16 and he largely ran the business. He spent hours cutting grass, his imagination running amok. “I would sit on my John Deere riding mower imagining stories and I think that is what has stayed with me… that kid was writing. I was cranking out stories like crazy from about Grade 6 on.”

Briefly turning to his latest offering, I Will Ruin You, Barclay is asked about resonating with the main character, Richard.

“Probably there is a little bit of me in all of the main characters,” he replies. “These main characters are in no way equipped to deal with the kind of people they’re going to come up against. They have regular jobs. They’re not ex-Navy Seals, spies or cops. They’re teachers, small-town newspaper reporters, used car salesmen because that’s the kind of people I know, who I hang out with. I always say, ‘what would it be like for people like us brought up against some pretty bad business’?”

He is asked about anxiety – something he references in his characters. “I’m a great worrier. About small things and big things,” he says.

Quoting Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” he adds, “I’m starting to think it doesn’t look that way to me and so it’s easy to become very discouraged. It’s hard to find any kind of silver linings these days. There seems to be a celebration of ignorance lately and a rejection of actual facts. It worries me a great deal.”

Does writing fiction allow for an escape? Not really, he says, rather sometimes prickly subjects find their way into his books. For example, there is a theme in I Will Ruin You where parents question the appropriateness of a book that English teacher Richard is having his students read. Barclay is no fan of banning books. “If you have an axe to grind, you can still do it in the context of a thriller.”

He said he sometimes gets feedback from readers who do not want this opinionated content, and offers sardonically, “and my thinking is, that’s why we become writers, to keep our thoughts to ourselves.”

So, why is he continuing to do this – with novels 25 and 26 coming out next year?

“You can’t imagine not doing it. What are you going to do? Sit around, watch TV and have this great idea for a book and not do it? I think that would be hard. If you have a job that you hate, you can’t wait to retire and that’s wonderful. But to have the privilege of doing something you really enjoy, why would you throw that away?”

Bookapalooza begins at noon Saturday with an exhibit hall filled with dozens of local authors. Admission is free. A ticketed conversation with Barclay happens at 3 p.m. followed by a book signing. There’ll be a reception and dinner with the author at the Dominion Hotel at 6 p.m. This is a paid event. See more at haliburtonarts.on.ca/ bookapalooza

If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood…who you gonna call?

In the case of Minden Hills manager of cultural services, Shannon Kelly, who oversees the township’s Heritage Village, it was the Paranormal Seekers.

Kelly invited the Durham Region-based group’s researchers this spring for a look at the Stirling Bank building, Stanhope Schoolhouse circa 1898, and Bowron house, a log cabin from the 1860s.

Spokesperson and lead researcher, Rachel Cross, heads up the nine-person team.

“Our goal is to go into these locations, find that spooky, interesting history, share it with everyone and get people interested in learning about the past and learning about the culture in their community,” she said.

She added they often say, “a haunting is history waiting to be heard. We kind of bring that past, connect it with the present in that interesting way that hopefully grabs people’s attention and gets them to come out, whether they’re going to have an experience or not.”

They did have encounters when they descended on the site on a mid-April evening with researchers, investigators, intuitives and technology.

It was a dark and dreary Friday night, April 12, when the group arrived, beginning with a tour and setting up base camp in the cultural centre. They began their investigations in Stirling Bank.

“Immediately, right off the bat, it was like bang, bang, bang, things began to happen and we couldn’t even get our equipment out fast enough,” Cross said.

She added they captured a figure on their structured light sensor (SLS) camera. She said it was in human form and appeared to be pointing towards military artifacts in a cabinet. They just didn’t know which one it was pointing at.

She noted they were the first people to be in the building since January, “so this could be why things were happening. Whoever was there was like, ‘oh, people’.”

She said right after that, their equipment batteries started to drain – something that happened all night long, and a sign the entities were drawing the energy. “Anything they can use to manifest, to get what they want across, how they’re going to show themselves,” Cross said. She noted the video cameras only lasted for about seven minutes before batteries completely drained.

She said there was “surprisingly lots going on. More than we thought.”

Other bits of technology were “going off.” One of the team members thought she saw a shadow, and what looked like flashes going by, and their music box began to play. She said they tried to figure out who the person was by asking questions, answered via a ghost box app. It was inconclusive.

Moving to the schoolhouse, Cross said the SLS camera captured something on the ceiling. She isn’t sure what it was. “We don’t know if it was just somebody saying ‘what are these people doing here? I’m just going to stay up here and hang out’ type thing. The music box did go off. It went off so much I had to physically turn it off because it wasn’t stopping. And when I went to turn it back on, it was dead.” She said that was unusual since it usually winds down and does not cut out completely. She said another member of the team thought he saw a shadow.

The last stop, Bowron House, continued to suck the batteries, Cross said. “We just want to talk to you, don’t drain our batteries,” she recalled thinking. She sat on the floor in the parlour with voice-cancelling headphones and a blindfold while plugged into the ghost box. The others asked questions while she repeated words she was receiving. She said a bell they use also rang once.

Cross said they do research about once a month and activity at the Heritage Village was above average, especially the Stirling Bank. However, they were never fearful.

“Everything there was great. When we went into the Bowron House, we felt like there were a lot of eyes on us, ‘what are you doing in my house… maybe you should leave’ type thing, but it wasn’t menacing or evil.”

Kelly said she has not experienced any paranormal activity in the original buildings in the Heritage Village, but has had community members share stories with her. She has worked with Cook and her team in Port Perry at the Scugog Shores Historical Museum, and reached out to her again when she came to Minden.

And stay tuned as Cross said they will be back in August to investigate another Minden property.