Lucy's loss sheds light on Barrie's homeless

To every thing there is a season.

As the minister read Ecclesiastes 3 to the assembled at Memorial Square in Barrie Wednesday afternoon, a flock of grey pigeons rose above the Canadian flag, breaking away from the white seagulls they'd been flying with around the shoreline to perch on a rooftop across the street.

Against a grey sky, a faint mist fell as Rev. Colin MacDonald read from the Old Testament in memory of Lucy Pinho and other homeless people who've recently died in the city of Barrie.

There's a time to be born and time to die, MacDonald said to the social workers who sat beside homeless people, and to street beat police officers who were there to pay their respects to Pinho who was found dead near the washrooms at Heritage Park Friday, Sept. 5.

Originally from Toronto, Pinho had moved to Barrie and at one point, accepted the services of the Canadian Mental Health Association and the David Busby Street Centre. But due to mental illness, Pinho became distrustful of people and being inside buildings, and refused to enter churches during the coldest months of the year to take comfort in the Out of the Cold program.

There's a time to weep and a time to laugh, the minister said to the middle-aged woman carrying two white and one blue rose in memory of a lady she'd never met.

Debbie said she drove up from Mississauga after she'd visited Barrie in September, and followed the white ribbons tied around poles and sign posts to the similarly decorated grate where Pinho used to sleep.

Tears were quickly brushed away as she described her own life two years ago, living in her van in the snow without a home and how when she saw Pinho's grate, she knew how easily that could have been her own fate.

Pinho slept on a steel platform in an alleyway behind the TD bank on Collier Street, but was asked to vacate the property by city staff who said they'd received complaints that a woman was camping downtown.

Near the end of August, a large fence was installed around the grate so she couldn't return to the spot and soon afterward, her health began to fail.

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Lucy's loss sheds light on Barrie's homeless