It’s a Monday morning at the OPP headquarters in Minden as Const. Joel Imbeau begins to read emails.

He’s looking for referrals from the weekend – from officers who think someone they’ve encountered might need his help.

As of last February, Imbeau is the mental health and addiction liaison officer for OPP – the first permanent appointee since a partnership was launched with the Canadian Mental Health Association Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge (CMHA HKPR) in 2021.

Most of the time, there is a CMHA HKPR mental health worker with Imbeau.

Calli Lorente is the manager of integrated crisis services for CMHA HKPR. She is speaking on behalf of the organization as the worker who has been assisting Imbeau is on leave. Other workers have been filling in.

From her perspective, “Mondays are just trying to sort through what has happened over the weekend.”

Lorente says, “how it used to work is the mental health officer worked in the detachment, which they still do, but they used to have a listening ear for any calls that came in that were mental health-related and work with that officer.” The first CMHA appointee on what is called the Mobile Crisis Response Team (MCRT) was Andrew Hodson, who said he’s currently on a leave of absence, working for MP Jamie Schmale. Lorente said Hodson, and his subsequent replacements, worked with different officers, “whereas now, with Joel in the role, it’s extremely helpful because he is able to get all of the referrals from the police. He can confirm consent and then collaborate with the mental health worker to either get out to that call in live time, or do a follow-up piece.”

‘Sparks first step’ towards getting help

Imbeau begins to read a referral; “the complainant indicated their partner is in cognitive decline and has become verbally abusive and aggressive.” The person who called the cops doesn’t feel safe living in the home anymore, and has left. The partner is now living alone. “Now, we have to find a method to support this individual,” Imbeau says.

“We could look at getting him Meals on Wheels, food delivery or grocery delivery, get in touch with the food banks.”

He envisages a referral to the Geriatric Assessment and Intervention Network (GAIN) team at Haliburton Highlands Health Services (HHHS). He suspects GAIN will call in the community paramedicine program, which makes house calls to at-risk seniors.

First, he’ll need to get consent from the person, and, hopefully, be able to speak to family members about what is going on.

He notes there is CMHA HKPR funding for emergency support.

As for the program itself, there are four people funded for the MCRT program through the Ministry of Health and Longterm Care. There is a fifth person funded through the City of Peterborough. These five staff provide MCRT support through partnerships with City of Kawartha Lakes OPP, Peterborough OPP, Peterborough Police Service and Haliburton OPP. The total budget of the program across all regions is $401,000 per year.

Reducing police calls and hospital visits

The MCRT’s are designed to help police and health partners collaborate with service providers in their communities. They are police-led, with an officer and a mental health worker responding together when police are called to a person in crisis. If it is during their working hours, they can go in-person. If after, it may be a follow-up.

“We know the coordination between police services, hospitals and mental health and addictions organizations on a mobile crisis response team leads to an effective use of police and hospital resources within the community,” solicitor general Michael Kerzner says.

OPP commissioner Thomas Carrique adds, “police are called upon to respond to thousands of mental health calls a year. Having officers and health partners work together decreases the impact on related policing and hospital resources, and means improved safety and better outcomes for everyone.”

Sgt. Paul McDonald was the MCRT police lead in Peterborough for about three years. After being stationed in Minden, he identified Imbeau as a member that had the qualities, compassion, empathy, and communication skills that would fit the role needed for a permanent, full-time MCRT lead in the County.

“There’s a lot to be said about having somebody from the community that everybody already knows and can put a name to a face,” McDonald says.

“We’re professionals when it comes to the Criminal Code, Provincial Offences and Highway Traffic acts. We’re not health or mental health experts. If we can create connections for people in crisis, and support them by bringing them to a health or mental health professional, we can focus on crime prevention.”

Imbeau said if it is not a live call, he often follows up with a cold call to the client. He identifies himself as a police officer working with the MCRT in conjunction with CMHA HKPR. “I ask them if they have any questions. I tell them we have good community partners. We have the ability to use CMHA’s resources and facilities if the person suffers from mental illness or addiction.

“Some of them are very engaged and they want the information. Others don’t even want to hear you talk. They hang up. You win your battles. You lose your battles.”

Consent driven

If the person says ‘yes,’ the team begins to try to figure out what is going on; “is there a physical issue, a mental health issue, or both?”

OPP and CMHA HKPR and partners, “try to see the puzzle, and if we can come up with a solution, so this person is supported properly,” Imbeau says.

Without consent, police cannot do anything, other than bring someone to hospital for a psychiatric assessment if they believe the person is a danger to themselves or others, or if they are likely to worsen without treatment. Police can also intervene in an emergency without a court order.

Lorente said when they do get to the door, “you have an officer who looks very much like an officer and a mental health worker who wears a vest but is in casual clothes. They don’t speak the same language and come in at different points of service. So, Joel will go into a call and make sure everything is safe for the mental health worker. He’ll say something like, ‘I actually have somebody who’d be a much better person to talk to you. Are you open to that’?”

Lorente said, “often that first interaction might not get someone engaged in support, but by being offered mental health support, it almost sparks that first step about thinking about service. ‘Maybe this could work’. It might not happen the first call, we might have to follow up, often staff leave a card, saying ‘I get you don’t want this today’, but then we get a call the next day and they actually want to hear what you could offer.”

McDonald said there is still a stigma attached to the program. “We’re not talking about it enough. The police uniform coming to a mental health call. ‘What are police going to do? Let’s close the door. I don’t trust government, organizations, policing’. It’s beating down those barriers and humanizing the badges.”

He recalls OPP being called out 21 times to one family he worked with in Peterborough before they finally got the necessary support services in place. They found temporary, alternative, housing for the family member with issues and got their medicine reviewed and fixed.

“And they came back a completely different person. They came into the office and said, ‘you changed my life just by being there’. Eighteen years of policing and those three years were the most rewarding,” McDonald said.

Dysart et al mayor Murray Fearrey has said the township is trying to get things moving again with the demolition of the Wigamog Inn after a portion of the main lodge’s roof recently caved in.

Work has been on hold since June 2023, when the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) intervened following reports of species at-risk residing in the area. A 14-month investigation wrapped up in the fall, with MECP informing owner, Aurora Group, it must meet requirements under the Environmental Protection Act for waste audits, waste reduction, and source separation of waste materials before work can continue.

The ministry also required Aurora Group to meet certain requirements under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) after it was determined at-risk bats, and the eastern hognosed snake reside on the property.

“We remain engaged with the owner regarding species at-risk assessments and waste audits prior to resuming demolition activities,” MECP spokesperson Gary Wheeler told The Highlander Nov. 5. “We will continue to stay on top of this issue and be involved as necessary.”

Asked whether the collapsed roof changed anything from the ministry’s perspective, Wheeler said it didn’t.

“Municipalities are the lead agencies for upholding property standards,” he said. “The ministry remains available to support the property owner and the Township of Dysart.”

Speaking this week, Fearrey expressed frustration over the protracted demolition likely stretching into another calendar year.

“They’ve (the ministry) made it clear to me [Aurora Group] has to get a clearance before they can start again,” he said, noting as of Nov. 12 the owners had still yet to appropriately deal with the at-risk bats. “I suggested to the ministry that the building isn’t safe now. I don’t know how you’re going to save these bats and other wildlife if the roof completely caves in. We have to move now.”

After indicating at a recent Dysart council meeting he would be in favour of the township taking over demolition, Fearrey confirmed that remains the plan.

“Once we get the clearance, absolutely we will [issue an RFP to] have someone come in. We’ve got to clean that mess up. We want to get at it – we’ve got a month here yet before snow falls by the look of it. If we can get someone in, we will, but it’s not likely,” Fearrey said.

Aurora Group president, Shawn Aurora, told The Highlander in September he hoped to have the remaining structures on the Wigamog property torn down by the end of the year. He did not respond to emailed questions for this story as of press time.

The township toyed with the idea of issuing an RFP for demolition in spring 2023, before Aurora Group started the project, with chief building official, Karl Korpela, estimating the cost to be north of $1 million.

Fearrey acknowledges that number will be higher now, but said the township could seize the property if Dysart taxpayers foot the bill and Aurora Group doesn’t compensate.

“I think that’s a pretty valuable piece of property. It includes two resorts. There’s about 45 acres that’s on sewer,” Fearrey said. “We’ll get out of it OK [if we have to go in], I’m not afraid of that.”

The mayor said, after discussing with bylaw officials, the roof cave-in doesn’t change anything from a property standards perspective – the property has already been labelled as being in a state of disrepair, with the department outlining 47 bylaw infractions between 2019 and 2022 for issues varying from downed power lines to smashed windows, damaged doors, and collapsed decks.

Given the requirements surrounding the at-risk bats, Fearrey said he expects demolition to be paused through winter.

The township is planning action, however – Fearrey said he wants to issue an RFP to have a contractor come in and haul away discarded materials from the dozen or so cabins that were torn down last spring. He hopes that can be done before the snow falls.

Fearrey also said he’ll continue to push MECP for a resolution.

“The ministry told me they were going to see if there would be any forgiveness [on the species at-risk] so we can get going – that was two weeks ago and I haven’t heard back. They’re not playing ball here,” Fearrey said. “We look bad – we’re not intending to look bad, we want to do the right thing, but the ministry can tie your hands so badly with this stuff.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this and I don’t want to again… just know, this remains top of mind for the township,” the mayor added.

When County residents Yvonne and Cary Kreuzwiesner made their way through Black Mountain, North Carolina recently, they saw a lot of similarities between the stateside community devastated by Hurricane Helene and their home base in the Highlands.

The pair spent a day helping residents literally pick up the pieces of their lives Nov. 2, offering support to those who “lost everything” during the brutal Category 4 storm that made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida Sept. 26, before making its way inland.

The storm caused catastrophic rainfalltriggered flooding in several states, including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina – with some rural communities hit particularly hard.

As of Nov. 6, Helene has been credited with causing $88 billion in damage and killing 233 people.

Yvonne was visiting her sister in Naples, Florida in mid-October when she learned the extent of the devastation. While Naples, on the southern tip of Florida, was largely unscathed, other parts of the country weren’t so lucky. Yvonne, having flown down, called husband, Cary, a few days after landing to say she wanted to help.

Cary got to work packing supplies – food and water, space blankets, sleeping bags, clothes – and made the long haul drive south – 14 hours to North Carolina rather than the 26-hour trip to Florida.

Yvonne had earlier heard from one of the volunteers she connected with in 2022, when assisting with Hurricane Ian clean-up in Fort Myers, Florida. He asked if they were planning to help again – though noted as bad as things were in the sunshine state, there were other areas, further north, that really needed help. It was then that Yvonne learned about Black Mountain.

The town of approximately 8,500 people is nestled in Pisgah National Forest – about 185 kilometres northwest of Charlotte, the state’s most populated city.

“As we got closer, it struck me just how much the Black Mountain area looked and felt like Haliburton County. It just made me think, ‘wow, what if this were us?’” Yvonne said. “When we pulled up to the town, everything was gone. Homes, if they were still standing, were stripped right down to the studs. There was massive flooding. People were living out of their cars.”

A community volunteer-led distribution hub was established at a nearby concert venue, where locals could go for supplies. Yvonne and Cary assisted there for a full day, unloading and sorting donated items, gathering supplies for those in need, and helping people to pack.

While Floridians are used to annual hurricane clean-ups, locals in Black Mountain told the Kreuzwiesners this was the first major storm to hit their area in 100 years. “People didn’t know what to do, where to turn. It was heartbreaking,” Yvonne said.

When they told people they were from a small community in rural Ontario – Cary donning a red Canada T-shirt and Yvonne a green Haliburton County tee – people couldn’t believe they’d made the trip.

Asked why they had, Yvonne said she feels a call to help in desperate situations.

“We had a tornado on Halls Lake in 2006 – it was total devastation; we didn’t have power for 10 days. But people came together and helped. There was the flooding in Minden in 2008, that was a tragedy that impacted so many people. You don’t hear stories like this, about places like this on the news,” Yvonne said.

“I can’t just sit back and watch and not want to help. I just can’t,” she said.

The couple are already planning another trip south of the border, back to Black Mountain, to help the community rebuild. Yvonne also wants to go to Jasper, Alberta where wildfires raged from mid-July to early September, scorching 96,000 acres and destroying 358 buildings, according to Parks Canada. The Kreuzwiesners are accepting donated items to help people in both areas. To give, contact Yvonne at ykreuz@hotmail.com.

All in this together

The Kreuzwiesners weren’t the only Highlanders helping south of the border following Hurricane Helene – a handful of Hydro One and Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) staffers spent weeks in Florida and Georgia getting power lines reinstalled.

Rick Putman was the foreman managing about 130 workers, including some from Haliburton County, who arrived in Georgia Oct. 8 and spent three days helping there before moving onto Clearwater, Florida.

“This is the worst we’ve ever seen,” Putman said, noting he was a part of a crew that assisted in 2017 following Hurricane Irma and has been involved in about half a dozen other efforts. “When you see the number of outages and what people are living through, the conditions they’ve been thrust into, it’s hard not to want to try and help.

“Despite the devastation, people are so excited to see somebody is there trying to help them. When they find out we came all the way from Canada, they’re always floored. I just tell them we’re all in this together,” he added.

As of Oct. 22 all Hydro One workers had returned home, confirmed company spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa.

Amid skyrocketing demand for their services, Central Food Network executive director Tina Jackson and board chair, Nancy WrightLaking, had some sobering statistics to share with Highlands East council Nov. 12.

Jackson said they had more than 60 volunteers and two permanent staff, delivering a suite of services in Highlands East, and across the County.

They have food banks in Wilberforce and Cardiff, for emergency and regular food assistance. They offer food delivery of hampers, including a holiday food hamper and toy program. The Wilberforce office is a distribution point for Rotary Club of Haliburton’s ‘good food boxes’, and houses Community Cooks volunteers, who turn surplus food into frozen, prepared meals.

She added volunteer manager Ken Mott “manages to acquire” in excess of 100,000 pounds of surplus food annually, distributed through their food banks, Community Cooks, and shared with neighbouring food banks and not-for-profits.

They run a heat bank, with heat and hydro grants and emergency firewood – and also help people to find other resources. They even help with tax filing. They are on several community committees, too. Jackson added they are proud to supply $3 worth of assistance for every $1 they receive.

At that point, she told council that was the end of CFN’s good news.

Referring to The Food Banks Canada hunger report, Jackson said, “poverty in Canada is spiraling out of control. In the last five years, visits to Canadian food banks have almost doubled. March of this year alone, saw well over two million visits to food banks in Canada.”

Jackson said locally, “we are continuing to see increases in the number of people needing our services and visits to our food banks are also increasing at an alarming pace.”

She said they are now serving 57 more people on average every month compared with pre-pandemic statistics, not including their busiest months. They are supporting an average of 307 monthly visits to their food banks, 100 more visits monthly than pre-pandemic.

“Not only are more people needing access to a food bank but people walking through our door need help more frequently.”

She said they had already served 535 people so far this year, more than they had ever served before and they have not even hit their busiest months. Over a quarter of clients are seniors, and well over one-third children and youth.

“We are serving seniors, children, babies, single people, families and couples, people who are working, people who are unable to work. They are our neighbours, friends, maybe even our family.” Jackson estimated one in seven people are using their services.

She said working people and singles on disability supports are asking for help.

“When provincial and federal public policy doesn’t adequately support people, we see it here first. And responsibility to take care of people’s basic needs feels more and more like it is being downloaded to local charities like ours.”

Central Food Network turns 10 in 2025 and Jackson said, “we are concerned that if the continual trends continue, this is not sustainable.”

They are currently going through accreditation and continuing communications efforts. They receive no regular government funding. Jackson said they plan to increase fund development, human resource capacity, and increase physical space to be able to keep up with service demands.

Wright-Laking said they’d moved from a time when people needed periodic assistance in their life, to one in which many rely solely on the food bank or heat bank and is no longer sustainable. “We are in a real social crisis.”

She thanked Highlands East for monetary, and building, support. However, she said there are increasing needs. “We are outgrowing our spaces and hope you will have some for us.”

She conceded they’d brought a “dire” message about the direction food and heat insecurity is headed. Food Banks Canada is calling for the creation of a grocery and essential needs benefit, similar to the GST credit. She encouraged council to support the call to action.

Coun. Angela Lewis thanked staff and volunteers and asked what they get from government. Jackson said they get a $2,500 grant to assist with tax clinics.

Deputy mayor Cec Ryall and Mayor Dave Burton said council would look at their 2025 budget, with Burton adding, “we’ll see what happens at budget time.”