For the past year, 77-year-old Audrey Cain has had to rely on portable heaters to stay warm at the Grand-Moulin seniors home in Deux-Montagnes, Que. The building’s geothermal heating system failed completely and, despite months of repairs, the heat has not returned. “They don’t answer the phones at the office. Some people are also heating with their ovens,” says the elderly woman, who needs a walker to get around. Five floors above, 73-year-old Barbara McMaster is just as uncomfortable in her otherwise clean and spacious apartment, which she shares with her husband. “When we’re sitting in the evening, we have the heater going, but it only heats a certain area. You feel the cold coming from the patio doors,” she explains, days after the temperature dipped below -20 C. She and her husband have also placed space heaters in various rooms, aware of the fire hazard. In fact, several tenants say they stop using them or turn them off at night for safety reasons. Many say the commercial-strength models they were offered draw too much current, leading cables to melt or short-circuit power outlets. “They told me that they’re working on it, that they’re not magicians, that they can’t fix it like that,” explains McMaster. “And I asked the girl, I said, would you let your mother live in these conditions? She wouldn’t answer me.” The Deux-Montagnes housing corporation is a non-profit organization that owns the building and is run by the city. Mayor Denis Martin says the geothermal heating system was installed when the building was constructed in 2009. It was supposed to last 25 years but broke down after 15. After nine months of waiting for parts, the administration gave up and decided to retrofit the building with natural gas heating. “We ordered three new furnaces to heat this water for the pipes,” explains Martin. He says tenants were consulted about the delays and most decided to stay. Moving the roughly 50 tenants was not an option, he says. “Well, it’s easier said than done. There’s no place right now to bring those tenants to a safer area.” Firefighters say space heaters can be dangerous. A third of all house fires in Canada are caused by their misuse, especially older models without fail-safe mechanisms in case they overturn. Martin says the city explained proper safety measures to each tenant. “Of course, we ask the people to not manipulate those heaters and make sure that we gave a crash course to each tenant. And this was the best way to have heat for them for the next month.” There is now a sense of urgency. The seniors are regularly looked after by the local CLSC (Centre local de services communautaires) and social workers, who routinely take the ambient temperature. Audrey Cain says she fears a cold spell could force her out. “Yesterday, we had a social worker come in and say, ‘if it gets worse than it is, (you’ll need a) place to go.’ And that’s what got me upset, because I have nowhere to go.” The city says the new furnace could be operational in about a week for at least half the building. But that would still leave the other half in the cold until January at the earliest.
