Goderich Mayor Says Staying Outside For Twelve Hours On Friday Night Was A Bone-Chilling Experienced

by Bob Montgomery

Goderich Mayor Trevor Bazinet was joined by Councillor Randy Carroll and GDCI grade eleven student April Selkirk for a preview of Saturday's Coldest Night of the Year Event.

Bazinet says they wanted to get a small taste of what a person who is homeless experiences and he's very quick to point out it was just a small taste. “We did it for twelve hours and that was a huge challenge for us to get through those twelve hours. And the reason it's such a challenge is, one, obviously you're dealing with the cold, two, it's the lack of sleep. We didn't get any sleep. We tried. We actually camped out in the entrance of Schaefer's Ladies Wear on the square, so we were laying on cold concrete and once that cold gets to your bones, the only way you can basically survive and not freeze to death is get up and walk around.” Bazinet says they had to get up every hour and walk twice around the square and that warmed them up enough that they could go back and lay down for a while, but sleeping was out of the question. Bazinet says the mental part of freezing and going without sleep would have a significant impact.

Bazinet says the experience was exactly what he was hoping it would be. First he wanted to challenge himself, but more importantly he wanted to educate himself about what a person who is homeless actually deals with. And he learned. Tim Hortons is open till about eleven, so you can hang out there, but once they're closed you're just trying to survive. He also points out that it was very cold on Friday night, but in the summer a homeless person has to deal with the heat, which on some night can also be an issue. In the summer, bugs are just one more thing a homeless person has to deal with and on top of all of that, there's the challenge of finding food.

Bazinet says the evening was definitely an eye-opener for him.