On Colborne Street, Two Crises Meet at the Same Door

There is a particular kind of gathering that forms around a place of warmth—a coffee shop, a familiar corner, a spot where the lights stay on and the doors stay open. For some, it is a refuge. For others, it becomes a flashpoint. On Colborne Street East in Orillia, the Tim Hortons has become both, and the tension between those two realities has left business owners, customers, and the people who gather there searching for a solution that no one has yet found.

The daily scene outside the Tim Hortons on the south side of Colborne Street has become a concern for neighboring businesses. Homeless individuals and drug users congregate around the coffee shop and across the street at Municipal Lot 1, where the Lighthouse outreach van arrives each day with food and supplies . “They come because of the Tim Hortons and the Lighthouse food truck but then they just stay here,” said Parisa Shirazi, owner of InnoKids Park, an indoor children's play centre in the same plaza .

The impact on surrounding businesses has been tangible. Shirazi said two customers cancelled reservations after seeing homeless individuals in the parking lot. One person has been sleeping in front of her door, and when she asks him to move, he shouts at her . “It makes the place not appropriate for children and their families,” she said. John Hammill, publisher of OrilliaMatters, whose office is in the same plaza, described the situation as a mix of homelessness and drug activity that has become difficult to manage. “We have drug dealers and users using and dealing in broad daylight with nothing being consistently done or monitored by any level of enforcement,” he said .

A homeless woman who spoke with OrilliaMatters offered a perspective that complicates the narrative. “I don't think you can categorize all the homeless people as one because some of us don't do drugs. Some of us are not selling drugs,” she said . The distinction between homelessness and heavy drug use was echoed by Hammill himself, who said, “It's not the homeless that are the problem. It's the heavy drug users” .

The owner of Georgian Bay Printers, who asked not to be named, said she does not mind the regular homeless people who know her and move when she opens. It is the drug users who loiter around high, creating an unsafe environment, that concern her most. “Something really needs to be done,” she said. “Somebody needs to get this whole drug issue out of downtown Orillia and that's the only way local businesses are going to be supported” .

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orillia and District moved out of the plaza to a new location last fall, and the unit remains empty . The old Packet & Times building next door has installed motion detectors, lights, and 24-hour video surveillance. Tim Hortons did not respond to emailed questions from OrilliaMatters .

The situation on Colborne Street reflects a broader challenge facing cities across Ontario: how to address the overlapping crises of homelessness and addiction without simply displacing them from one corner to the next. For the businesses in the plaza, the answer cannot come soon enough.

The images accompanying this article are AI-generated and intended for illustrative purposes only.

Sources: OrilliaMatters