At Least They Gave Him a Warm, Safe Place to Die

74-year old Ted spent the last hours of his life in his favourite seat inside the Tim Hortons on West Broadway in Vancouver.

In the city with the most expensive houses in Canada, 24-hour restaurants have become a means of survival for many people. 

Advocates and experts say that Ted's death is an indictment of a system that has failed to provide shelter for the city's most vulnerable. 

John Gingham, who sleeps outside the Tim Hortons every night and said he had been friends with Ted for 10 years, described him as a "good guy" who "loved his cigarettes and coffee." 

"He'd talk. He'd joke around. He was friendly, right? If you didn't know him, he wouldn't say much to you," Gingham said. 

"Fast-food places take the place of the shelters that we don't have," said longtime homeless advocate Judy Graves. 

Graves knew Ted. She said he was struggling with extremely limited pensions to pay for both food and housing. 

"Ted was all but living in that particular Tim Hortons. So he was there all the time, and I think people were just used to him, used to him being there, and used to ignoring him." 

Graves said Ted knew he was close to the end, having been sick with cancer for some time.

It's wonderful that Tim Hortons was Ted's refuge, on his final day a warm, safe place to die. But in a city awash in wealth and high-end everything, it's also a disgrace.

Federal immigration laws have failed not just the homeless but Vancouverites generally going all the way back to Mulroney's "citizenship for cash" days. Trudeau's contribution has been to announce the opening of a network of new immigration offices in major cities across China. Because of the indifference and dereliction of people like Mulroney and Trudeau, young people, even with educations and what once were thought of as "good jobs" can no longer afford to live where they were born and brought up.

Vancouver Region Bracing for Storm Surge, King Tides and Flooding.

The next couple of days pose a serious flooding threat to the Lower Mainland, particularly Vancouver's low-lying suburbs.

Sunday and Monday are expected to see the strongest of the seasonal "king tides", with levels over 5 metres above low tide.
But Oceanographer Scott Tinis says a storm surge will bring that several feet higher.
"Places such as Boundary Bay are particularly susceptible to not only the raising sea levels but the wind waves. So low-lying areas, especially near river deltas , may see some localized flooding."
Tinis says the last time we saw ocean levels this high was during the 1982 El Nino storm season.
That storm surge is also expected to bring some flooding to areas of Delta.
Emergency centre director George Harvie says crews will be busy before the extremely high tide hits at around 9 Monday morning.

Update:  At first it seemed like a false alarm but now that seems to have been wishful thinking.  Municipal crews are said to be sandbagging furiously and the surge is expected on this evening's high tide.