This is how Darcy Gagnon describes his bouts with addiction, health and homelessness.
The 32-year-old Hamiltonian is working on all three since checking into Wesley’s special care unit in February.
At first hesitant to give the residential program a shot, Gagnon is now glad he took the plunge.
“I’m more positive. I’m a lot happier. I’m healthier,” he told The Spectator during a recent visit.
The storm clouds in his life seem to be dissipating.
“I feel like there’s actually hope that I’m actually going to have the ability to get off all of the street opioids.”
For about 20 years, Wesley has operated a managed alcohol consumption program.
Last September, the city funded a 20-bed boost, taking the overall number of spaces to 30, as the social-service agency piloted a polysubstance program expansion.
Those beds were among an overall temporary multimillion-dollar increase of 192 spaces to Hamilton’s shelter system as city officials aimed to get people out of encampments.
I feel like there’s actually hope that I’m actually going to have the ability to get off all of the street opioids.
Funding for the additional special care unit beds, which was budgeted at roughly $800,000, is set to expire at the end of December.
Gagnon credits staff on the Main Street East unit’s team for supporting him.
“That’s why it’s called the special care unit.”
The team includes doctors and nurses, as well as specialists in harm reduction, psychotherapy and case management.
They help clients reconnect with families, find jobs and secure housing or, in some cases, long-term care.
During their time on the unit, they can keep using methadone or suboxone to help diminish cravings.
Outside doctors also prescribe safer-supply drugs, such as hydromorphone, to replace volatile concoctions of fentanyl sold on the street.
All the while, the clients recover from the grind of homelessness in the privacy of their own rooms.
Whether they’re coming from tents or shelters, all enter the special care unit with addictions.
“But the opposite of addiction isn’t just abstinence — it’s community,” emphasizes Robyn Currie, director of housing and homelessness.
The program’s focus is on building life skills, establishing routines, reconnecting with family, addressing the underlying issues.
“You’re helping them build that capacity to go out in the world and value themselves,” Currie says.
The rebound might still involve drinking or taking drugs, just not to the point of losing one’s housing.
“There are ways that both can exist.”
“The opposite of addiction isn’t just abstinence — it’s community,” emphasizes Robyn Currie, director of housing and homelessness. Cathie Coward/The Hamilton Spectator
Ups and downs
Gagnon’s life started in foster care.
His mother also had a “hard upbringing,” he says.
Gagnon, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, bounced from foster home to foster home.
One family adopted him and his younger sister, but before he hit his teens, they ricocheted back into the system.
“It was kind of like a big shock,” Gagnon recalls. “I was upset about it.”
Such childhood turbulence was a fairly common thread among those surveyed during Hamilton’s “point-in-time” count in 2024.
The opposite of addiction isn’t just abstinence — it’s community.
Of 807 survey respondents experiencing homelessness, 25 per cent said they’d spent time in foster care or a youth group home.
Being in foster care, and feeling “not really part of a family,” has played a significant role in his addiction, Gagnon told The Spectator.
“My whole life has just been like an up-and-down roller-coaster.”
After he graduated from high school, Gagnon followed his passion for music by studying recording arts in Toronto.
But facing few job prospects, he returned to Hamilton, where he started working as a roofer.
Then in 2011, acting on a gut feeling and a tip from his cousin, he met his biological mother in a chance encounter downtown.
“It was a big thing for me … a dream come true.”
But four years later, Gagnon was at his mom’s side when she died in hospital of illness.
And so his roller-coaster ride headed downward again.
Darcy Gagnon says he has found hope for overcoming addiction and homelessness in Wesley’s special care unit. Cathie Coward/The Hamilton Spectator
“I always had a pending sense of doom after that,” Gagnon says, glancing out the window of his room.
Later that same year, he fell from a roof he was working on and broke his arm.
With that, Gagnon says, he got hooked on prescription drugs.
“And slowly but surely, it kind of snowballed, and I ended up losing my place.”
A few years later, another apartment didn’t work out for Gagnon.
Roofing had dried up for him with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
He relapsed as chaos took hold of his flat, with friends using it “like an injection site, almost.”
“I was always kicking people out and it just got overwhelming.” So one day, he “walked right out.”
Back on the street, he shifted from shelter to shelter, tent to tent.
“It’s kind of a big blur,” says Gagnon, summing up the years of desperation.
“We are in a crisis and we have a model that’s working,” Wesley CEO Rashed Afif says. Cathie Coward/Spectator file photo
‘A model that’s working’
Wesley’s goal is to continue the expanded program, CEO Rashed Afif says.
“We are in a crisis and we have a model that’s working.”
Without it, “we’re going to be dealing with a lot of unfortunate situations where people don’t have a place to go,” Afif says.
Of the 40 people the unit served over a year-long period ending in April, seven have secured housing. One is waiting for long-term care and another for hospice.
Others have found work. Some have pursued education or training.
Crucially, the unit has also helped clients stabilize, which has cut down on trips to hospital emergency rooms.
During the same one-year period, there were 13 ER visits, which was mostly for falls by older residents.
Contrast that with some clients heading to the ER up to three times a day before admission, Afif points out.
“It saves a lot of money for the system,” he says, adding it makes sense to invest “proactively” in solutions.
How the special care unit fits into the city’s plans after Dec. 31 is unclear.
Staff plan to report to council in the coming months “on next steps” in a plan to strengthen Hamilton’s shelter system, Michelle Baird, the city’s housing services director, said via email.
“The city remains committed to expanding shelter capacity and supporting unhoused residents with dignity and safety as long-term affordable housing solutions continue to be developed.”
Supervisor Cynthia MacDonald factored heavily into his decision to give the special care unit a try, Darcy Gagnon says. Cathie Coward/The Hamilton Spectator
Cutting back
For Gagnon, a fear of “failing” kept him from giving the Wesley program a try.
He didn’t want to go through detox only to wind up “stuck” in the shelter system again, exposed to the triggers of drug use.
But knowing that supervisor Cynthia MacDonald, who’d helped him with housing in the past, would be there was a big factor.
“I just decided it’s probably a better chance than what I’m doing right now.”
And so far, so good, Gagnon says.
“I’ve already cut back huge on using and I just want to kick that 100 per cent.”
When he’s ready, he’d like to get back to work and find a place to live again, Gagnon explains.
At one point, he pauses this story to apologize to MacDonald.
He feels badly about how that last tenancy ended.
“Sorry, Cynthia, for that.”
MacDonald smiles and says, “That’s OK.”
Teviah Moro is a reporter and editor with the Hamilton Spectator who specializes in municipal politics, housing and homelessness. Reach him at tmoro@thespec.com.
