‘Fingers were falling off’: Volunteer shares realities of deep freeze

The deep freeze is over, but we’re now starting to learn about the toll it took on some people.

Claire Card is a volunteer with Feed the People, a group that’s been providing hot food, clothing and donations to people in the old St. Mary’s Credit Union parking lot every Sunday for over two years. She was also the federal NDP nomination candidate for Saskatoon-West in 2024.

Read more:

• Zebras cozy up at Saskatoon zoo as snow leopard sunbathes in extreme cold
• Saskatchewan’s deep freeze set to break as warmer air moves in
• Extreme cold putting Saskatchewan car batteries to the test

Card said this past weekend, about 10 to 15 per cent of the roughly 75 people served by the group on Jan. 25 came without anything to cover their hands.

“Those people would have exposure, if not bad frostbite, and we saw one individual whose fingers were falling off,” according to Card, who added that Feed the People was supplying gloves and mittens to those who needed them.

In a phone call, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said it couldn’t share how many frostbite cases it dealt with during this deep freeze, but those numbers will be available in three months.

Card said in recent weeks, there’s “absolutely no way for people to stay warm” outside.

“It doesn’t matter if you have -100 C Sorel boots, you’re going to be freezing. So, we see people with ends of their fingers that are blackened by gangrene, that have bits that have fallen off,” she said.

Having capacity in warming centres isn’t the answer

During the deep freeze, it wasn’t necessarily a matter of there not being enough spaces for people to go and warm up.

Housing Critic April ChiefCalf said that although warming centres are close to reaching capacity, they were “not turning people away.”

But, Card said there are situations where people aren’t able to use a warming centre, sharing how those with a pet can’t go in without leaving their animal and those in wheelchairs have difficulty navigating the snow.

According to ChiefCalf, the solution to keeping people healthy when temperatures plummet is housing.

Warming centres and shelters are “band-aid solutions” and “not a long-term sustainable way to address the problem. Folks need housing,” she said, adding that people have difficulty even accessing it.

Listing some barriers, she said, rent is too high and potential tenants get denied if they’re on social assistance, don’t have a reference or don’t have IDs.

“Housing is a government responsibility, a provincial government responsibility, and that’s where the solutions are going to have to come from,” ChiefCalf said.

Some of the suggested solutions, according to ChiefCalf, are rent control and restoring direct payment to landlords.