How can a person beloved by his community fall so easily through its institutional cracks?
This question looms over the life and death of David Armitage, the 58-year-old man whose death last week sparked an outpouring of communal grief, but also raised questions about the state of services for individuals struggling with homelessness and mental illness.
Trinity Presbyterian Church, not far from where Armitage died, will host a memorial service on Sunday, Jan. 15. Local social activist Dorothy Chambers, who knew Armitage for eight years, said she expects a big turnout. “He was well known in the community,” she said. “He was pretty much a daily fixture. People knew who he was.”
A passer-by discovered Armitage’s body on Dec. 28 in a wooden area near the intersection of Tillicum Road and Gorge Road. This location, familiar but out of sight for many, is perhaps illustrative of Armitage’s status during his final years of life: present to many, but invisible to the system.
News of Armitage’s death quickly spread throughout this working-class neighbourhood of Saanich and soon found physical form in a makeshift memorial outside a local pharmacy, where Armitage frequently sat on a nearby bench, greeting locals as they passed by.
Consisting of several large placards and other tributes, the spot turned into a makeshift shrine, where residents could scribble messages of condolences and share personal memories about Armitage, who leaves behind a daughter and a sister.
Bev King, who works at the pharmacy and helped organize the memorial, said Armitage will be missed. “It is sure strange to come here and not see him on the bench,” said King, who will remember Armitage as a kind man, who never asked for any help and took pleasure in simple things, like his black hat, with which he pretended to be Frank Sinatra.
Nephew Steve Migliarese said Armitage could not have survived as long as he did, if it had not been for the help of the community.
Yet Migliarese also noted that the story of his uncle is not unique in the sense that he was a “casualty” of an under-funded health care system that cannot properly care for individuals like Armitage.
“He won’t be the last person found in a public space alone,” said Migliarese. “The love for Dave is a feel-good story, but underneath it is heartbreaking and is a common problem. Many others live in the surrounding parks and are not as social as Dave and are literally hermits and forgotten.”
Armitage’s struggles began in 2001 when he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Prescribed medication, Armitage stopped taking it once he felt he had the condition under control, said Migliarese. “My mother, his sister, took Dave in during the early stages of his spiral…and over the course of months he had episodes of delusion and became a danger to others living in the house,” he said.
In fact, emergency staff and police showed up on the final day he resided there and assessed him for an hour. “There was a three-page report written and they decided he needed to be taken in for further assessment,” he said. “The next day a doctor spoke with Dave for two minutes. Obviously, the signs of his problems were not showing. The doctor asked Dave if he had a place to go, and he said yes just to get out of there.”
Looking back, Migliarese said no one in his family was equipped or able to take in Dave as a fully dependent person with mental health issues that would flare up and pose a danger. “We all, including Dave, were sorry that this was the case,” he said. “If he had been properly diagnosed in the initial visit and treated, he might have taken a different path. It was a crucial mistake on the part of our health care system.”
So began what Migliarese called Armitage’s “period of living in public spaces,” a period during which he and his mother would check up on him. He also had the fortune of being functional enough to come out of the trees and interact with people and gain their trust and friendship. “There are many people in those parks who never leave their area and will never be known and will be found dead and alone amongst their belongings,” he said. “There are others who are halfway in between that have familial support and their families are receiving zero support, the same as we did for Dave.”
Chambers was among those who gained Armitage’s trust. “My relationship with Dave goes back about eight years,” said Chambers. “At the time, he lived in Cuthbert Holmes Park in a tent, hidden in the shade of the underbrush. I would see him often, laying in a sunny spot on the grass, napping, ‘warming my bones’ he used to say.”
First chatting from a distance, Chambers and Armitage eventually shared long conversations about Chambers’ efforts to protect and promote local salmon stocks in nearby Colquitz River.
Armitage had once worked in Uclelet’s commercial fishing industry, so he knew a lot about the subject. “He was so interested in the Colquitz salmon run,” she said. In fact, it wasn’t long before she would find him “speaking with the dope smoking/beer drinking teenagers” that frequented the area.
“He was teaching them the values of the Colquitz River, and the metal structure (a fish ladder) they were sitting on. We would have long conversations with the teens, and they asked such good relevant and interested questions. They sure listened to him, and understood his message of conservation and protection of this amazing river.”
Others who knew Armitage relayed similar stories, and his death has hit a social nerve in sparking a community-wide discussion about affordable housing and mental health, said King. “Everybody is getting on the bandwagon and wanting to do something,” said King.
Locals have so far raised about $1,000 towards a physical memorial for Armitage.
Migliarese, meanwhile, hopes that the death of his uncle will bring about overdue changes in the care of individuals with mental illnesses, but he is not confident that something will happen.
“The worst thing that could happen is nothing changes and the medical system further deteriorates,” he said. “I have as much faith in our current provincial government as the amount of help they offered my uncle – zero.”