[URBAN NOTE] "“Share the warmth” bus shelter ad where homeless man died gives observers chills"

[rfmcdonald]

In January of this year, I noted--with photos--a bus shelter on the southwest corner of Yonge and Dundas where a homeless man, exposed to the chill of winter, had died of exposure. This evening after work, I went there to take a picture of the same shelter, for--as May Warren of the Toronto Star noted--it was newsworthy again.

One freezing morning last winter, as Torontonians hurried past him at one of the country’s busiest intersections, a homeless man dressed in only a T-shirt, jeans and a hospital bracelet was found dead in a bus shelter at Yonge and Dundas Sts.

Passing by that same shelter this month, street nurse and advocate for the homeless Cathy Crowe was shocked to see it decked with ads for winter coats and boots, with the words “Share the warmth.”

“The wording was particularly offensive,” she said. “It was just too ironic for words.

“The circumstances in the city are that the warmth isn’t shared. We don’t have enough shelter beds; people are sleeping outside.”

After Crowe complained to the city and Astral Out-of-Home which supplies the shelter and sells advertising space, the offending phrasing was removed Tuesday.