As the cold wind sweeps in, warm cups of hot chocolate pass through a community that often gets the cold shoulder from society.
With winter approaching, Susan Geboers, the Harm Reduction Outreach Counsellor at the John Howard Society (JHS), ensures people struggling with addiction are warm and safe.
“We go out and give them hot chocolate and support in that way,” Geboers said.
Sometimes small actions make the biggest difference and a smile can be the start of healing.
“People get so excited about having hot chocolate when we are out,” said Geboers.
Moments like these, though small, mirror a broader struggle unfolding across Durham.
Mental health and substance use are two of the top two key priority areas in Durham Region’s Community Safety and WellBeing Plan. They go hand in hand.
Three-quarters of Durham Region adults are worried about their own or a household member’s mental health, and more people are rating their mental health as fair or poor, according to the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan. Aside from a temporary decrease in 2017, the number of mental health-related calls that resulted in a mental health worry has been on the rise since 2016.
As more people are reporting poor mental health, opioid overdoses are increasing. In 2012, there were four deaths per 100,000 and in 2021 there were 18, according to the Region of Durham.
“An addiction is some way of coping with an issue,” said, Percy D’Souza, founder of GraceWins Peer Support, an organization that offers mental-health support groups. “Nobody wants to become an addict.”
D’Souza has experienced severe mental illness and understands the benefit of harm reduction. He built an organization with people who have also dealt with mental health challenges and know firsthand how important community support can be.
Rick Kerr, an Oshawa City Councillor, looks at harm reduction from a broader, city-wide perspective. He acknowledges just how complicated the issue is, saying: “there isn’t a silver bullet, one solution, that solves the problem.”
Dan Blomme, a mental health and addictions professor at Durham College (DC), said when people are out on the streets in this cold weather, “drug use becomes much more about survival or compulsion.”
What he describes on today’s streets echoes a struggle Canada has been addressing for generations.
In 1989, Canada’s first government-funded needle syringe program opened in Toronto and 91 countries included harm reduction within their national policies by 2016. It was that year, Canada declared the opioid epidemic a national crisis as overdose-related deaths reached the highest number in history.
As a result, Canada allowed the distribution of naloxone.
Naloxone is a “key emergency measure” in the opioid epidemic across Canada.
Blomme, who aside from working at DC is also a local psychotherapist, carries a naloxone kit in his bag and each of his vehicles.
In November, Geboers went to DC to speak to Blomme’s mental health and addictions class about the importance of harm reduction.
Second-year community mental health students enjoyed the presentation and learned a lot about harm reduction and addiction.
Trevor Smith said, “When we started in the addictions course, I think I was pretty overwhelmed by the idea of working with addictions, but now towards the end of the class I’m feeling a lot more capable.”
Brooke Bennett said she didn’t realize the impact overdoses have on our local hospital.
The CDC Overdose Prevention reports “an estimated 2.0 million opioid-involved ED visits occurred between 2022 and 2024.”
Harm reduction prevents the number of overdoses and “keeps the hospitals a little less bogged down,” Bennett said.
Preventing hospital visits is a form of harm reduction.
Geboers said the JHS connects with community partners to ensure a “warm transfer” beyond giving out hot chocolate.
When someone is ready to take the next step, Geboers tours treatment facilities, learns their processes, and explains to each person what to expect. This helps “take the fear away from the unknown,” she said.
Harm reduction is a community itself.
“Even though [individuals who struggle with addiction] might use substances with other people, that’s their community, and that’s important to them; everyone needs a community. It may not always be a positive community,” Geboers said.
Emma Wharmby, a mental health and addictions student at DC who is taking her final-year placement at the John Howard Society, says, harm reduction is about “meeting them where they’re at in that moment.”
Wharmby has been learning how to support people through their changes in mental health and advises to “treat them as human beings and be kind.”
This is what the outreach programs do as they hand out syringe kits with enough sterile supplies for ten uses. The On-Point program coordinates people with lived experience of homelessness or substance use to pick up materials and safely dispose of them after.
There are 14 kiosks for sharp drop-offs around Durham and there is an average 80 per cent return rate on the used syringes, according to Susan Geboers.
This percentage rate is based only on the syringes returned directly to the John Howard Society of Durham (JHSD) and does not include syringes that could be safely disposed of elsewhere like pharmacies and safe sharps containers.
Since most of the used supplies are accounted for, there is minimal effect on the environment.
As winter settles in and the wind sharpens, those warm cups of hot chocolate become more than just comfort; they become a reminder of what true support looks like.
In the same way, the John Howard Society’s “warm transfer” ensures no one is ever left standing out in the cold alone. By gently and intentionally passing individuals into the care of trusted partners, they offer not just services, but human connection.
“Without hope there’s no motivation,” said Kerr.
Harm reduction gives people hope.
If the community continues to wrap its arms around those who are so often pushed to the margins, there will always be a place where warmth is shared, safety is prioritized, and every person is welcomed in from the cold.