Aindrea Kiss, a registered nurse, stood outside Sanctuary Toronto’s church doors and gently placed a hand-held thermometer into the left ear of mourners lined up for Chris Vanhartskamp’s funeral. She ejected and replaced the disposable ear coverings with a fluid swing of her right arm.

Kiss scrutinized each temperature reading in the frigid morning air. A fever meant no entry.

No fever — and a “no” to Kiss’s inquiries about recent out-of-country travel or stubborn coughs — led to another mandatory step: Use the provided hand sanitizer before walking into 25 Charles Street East where the body of Vanhartskamp — also known as Chris Carpenter, born 45 years ago to Aboriginal parents — lay in a simple wooden casket, soon surrounded by nearly 150 family and friends connected to Toronto’s homeless community. On every chair: A tiny packet of tissues and a sealed alcohol swab.

This is the new normal in the age of the novel coronavirus. Screening a funeral crowd. It’s part of Sanctuary’s new operational plans, built on recommendations from its nursing staff and Toronto Public Health, to stay open for their homeless and street-involved guests who are isolated and lack support.

Funerals are not banned in Ontario, and on the morning of the Sanctuary memorial, gatherings of up to 250 were still permitted by the province. In these uncertain times, preventing grieving people from seeking comfort together would have been deeply troubling, said Vanhartskamp’s aunt Joyce Carpenter after Monday’s service.

“It was really important to hold the funeral because his friends all loved him so much,” said Carpenter, who with a friend had tied a mound of tobacco pouches for her nephew’s friends to take in his memory.

Carpenter recalled Vanhartskamp’s compassion, humour and courage as a street “sheriff” who could referee tense moments arising on the street. She also knew, as did his downtown friends, that her nephew’s large heart had been battered by unspeakable tragedy and loss. Controlling substance use was another challenge that, ultimately, he could not meet; Vanhartskamp, a well-loved man in the community, overdosed on March 6, Joyce Carpenter confirmed.

Chris Vanhartskamp is the fourth Carpenter sibling who, while experiencing homelessness, died while living in Toronto (one of the four became a transwoman as an adult) A fifth sibling, a brother who also lived on the city’s streets, died after he returned to northern Ontario.

The Carpenters were all “scooped” children.

While living in Moosonee, Ont., the five Carpenter sons, as well as two sisters, were adopted by three different families during the “1960s Scoop” that saw Indigenous children taken from their parents. Most of the deceased Carpenters are listed on the Toronto Homeless Memorial, an unofficial ledger that through dedicated volunteers, like social workers and street nurses, have recorded names of those who passed away in the city using community knowledge and city statistics.

This grim accounting stretches back to the 1980s and now tops 1,000 names. Chris is one of the most recent additions; siblings Mark, Andrew, Joanne (formerly Joseph) and Fred preceded him. The list is not comprehensive, despite best efforts, and falls short of capturing every death, according to those who maintain the information.

The siblings are also part of the extended Carpenter clan’s turbulent history in which family members have met disturbing, sometimes horrific, ends in Toronto.

Joyce Carpenter lost her 14-year-old daughter Patricia in 1992 — a coroner’s inquest jury ruled her death as suspicious but no further action was taken. Then her ex-husband, Patrick died; he lived on the street after they separated. Next, her brother-in-law Eddie. Lucie, her sister-in-law. Last fall, another nephew, Robin Besito. Now Chris.

“Trisha, Patrick, Eddie, Lucie, I’ve just got too many to name,” said Carpenter, who upon reviewing the Toronto Homeless Memorial earlier this year recognized more than 30 names of people she knew, about “10 of them family.”

“How many more do we have to lose?” she said, exasperated.

With the Carpenters, the manner of death varied. Some were substance related. Others, poor health; Patrick had a brain tumour. Suicide. Besito was killed. But a common element for many of 1,000 lost souls on the list: Homelessness. No safe, stable shelter. A precarious type of existence that, statistically, has homeless people dying decades earlier than the average Canadian life expectancy of around 80.

According to city of Toronto statistics for shelter resident deaths, 48 people — 38 men, 10 women — died in 2019. The average age of the deceased men was 57.2; women were 14 years younger at 43.2 years.

“I think a lot of (Indigenous) people come into the city hoping for something better … hoping for a better education, hoping for a better life,” said Carpenter, 69, who left her Alderville First Nation home near Peterborough in the mid-1970s for Toronto.

It was a kinder Toronto back then, said the woman who became a career bookkeeper for Women’s College Hospital, the Ontario government and after retirement, Aboriginal drop-in centres. Now, Joyce Carpenter worries for Aboriginal youth travelling to Toronto because affordable, stable housing doesn’t exist but risk and danger do.

“They see something special here,” she said. “They see the bright lights and say, ‘I’m going to make something of my life here,’ but it’s not all roses and candies. There are drugs, alcohol. There’s sex trafficking and there’s no housing for those young people.”

They also come to Toronto to search for relatives, Joyce Carpenter adds. After being torn apart as children, reuniting as family is a powerful, sometimes deadly, pull.

“I hate it when we lose people and the higher authorities don’t care,” she said.

A WEDDING AND A FUNERAL

Chris Vanhartskamp walked Lorraine Lam down the aisle at her 2018 wedding.

In the photos, he looks at her with genuine affection. She gazes up, radiant. Their long friendship — she, an outreach worker at Sanctuary, he a guest who visited other welcoming drop-ins around the city, but who frequented Sanctuary — enabled this treasured moment.

Here’s how it unfolded: Lam said when Vanhartskamp found out she was engaged, “he was so excited.” He also knew Lam didn’t have anyone to give her away, so he volunteered.

“He said, ‘Hey, can I walk you down the aisle?’ Lam recalled. “He said, ‘I’m never going to do that in my life for anybody else’ and I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’

Vanhartskamp was sure. Lam and her fiancé agreed, but were careful not to pressure him to follow through. She told him that even on the wedding day, if he wasn’t feeling up to it, he didn’t have to show. “I would totally get it,” she said. “There was no pressure.”

But he was there. Dressed up, dapper and handsome. Fresh haircut. Arm-in-arm with Lam at the Metropolitan United Church at Queen Street East and Church Street. A marriage witnessed by the bride and groom’s immediate families and their street families, with Vanhartskamp proud and beaming. A big, happy celebration.

“It was really, really lovely,” Lam said.

Lam sent Joyce Carpenter the wedding photos.

“I cried when I saw the pictures,” Carpenter said. “When I saw him looking at her, it was like he was her father.”

Lam met Vanhartskamp more than a decade ago at Church of the Redeemer, another Toronto homeless drop-in. She was just a University of Toronto student then, volunteering at Redeemer. Vanhartskamp told her he could juggle five oranges. Then he upped the ante; he said he could juggle seven. Lam didn’t believe him. The bet was on.

But he found seven oranges and juggled them. He won. She gave him $20.

Lam and Vanhartskamp developed a level of trust that allowed him to share his feelings. There were happy, fun times. There were moments of candour, too. Lam said Vanhartskamp would speak about his biological mother telling him, as the oldest boy, to watch out for his siblings. He felt he failed to protect them in Toronto.

“When you’re told that (by your mother) as a kid and you see your siblings leave when they’re adopted out, then you come to Toronto and see your younger siblings (die), I think there was a huge sense of guilt in terms of him not being able to do anything to protect them,” she said.

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“And that loyalty transferred to other people in his life, not just his biological family.”

The march of death through Toronto’s homeless community can be numbing. Sanctuary, alone, held at least 13 memorials last year.

Last Sunday, the day before Vanhartskamp’s funeral, the Sanctuary staff held an emergency meeting. With escalating closures by the province and the city to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Christian organization’s full set of novel coronavirus protocols were discussed; part of that conversation involved whether to stage Vanhartskamp’s funeral, said outreach worker Greg Cook.

“We did have a number of discussions about, ‘do we have to cancel it?’ And do we have the resources and the ability to make it safe enough?” Cook said.

The family wanted a memorial and “we wanted to make that go forward” said Cook, adding Sanctuary was also ready to follow any last-minute government instructions if funeral cancellations were announced.

“We said, ‘let’s keep posted with what the government was saying’ and obviously, we wanted to make sure everything we were doing was legal and wanted everyone to stay safe.”

It was a go.

The church was thoroughly cleaned on Sunday night and again, the next morning. Surfaces, handles, door knobs, railings disinfected. On Monday March 16, Chris Vanhartskamp’s friends said goodbye to him.

A FUNERAL

Music played softly — America’s “Horse with No Name,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” among them — as the mourners filed in. Joyce Carpenter stood over the casket, her hands lightly touching it. Head bowed for a time, then she sat.

An Elder gave a welcome in Ojibway, then explained in English that she’d thanked grandmothers and the Creator “for this young man who has gone into the western doorway, Chris.” A sacred fire burned in the church’s backyard, another place for reflection.

Three drummers drummed and sang as a cleansing smudge pot was offered to each guest. A family member named Daniel played guitar and sang for Vanshartskamp. Mourners were encouraged to speak, using a microphone that was held solely by a Sanctuary member who wiped it with a disinfecting cloth after each tribute (he asked people not to be offended by the germ-killing routine).

The tributes were funny, touching, loving.

One woman said Vanhartskamp could tell when she was upset and ask her to keep her chin up. “Rest in peace buddy, I miss you very much.” Another woman recalled he had a “heart full of love and pain.”

A former drinking buddy recounted a day when he panhandled and shared a bottle with Vanhartskamp, two security guards beat them up, police arrived and arrested the men, not the guards. Media got wind of it and the the men were released. “That’s one time we did win,” he said, getting laughs from the crowd.

Roy, a cousin from Moosonee, told Joyce Carpenter he knew the Carpenter children when they were young. Carpenter said she “teared up” when he came in. “I was so happy to see Roy.”

Lorraine Lam, her voice quavering with emotion, thanked everyone for showing up “despite all the apocalyptic messages in the world right now, because this is really special.”

Doug Johnson Hatlem is a street pastor who works one day a week at Sanctuary. He said it’s critical for those in homeless communities to mourn their friends, who, unlike the general population, die young and at a relatively rapid pace. Under COVID-19 precautions, it’s also become increasingly difficult for people to find shelter beds in an already tapped-out system — and a situation compounded by the closing of libraries, community centres, coffee shops with seating where the homeless could rest, read, escape snow and rain or charge their phones.

“These deaths just start building on each other and if you aren’t able to grieve them publicly, it almost starts to build like a physical presence within your body that has to come out somehow,” said Johnson Hatlem, in self-quarantine after a trip to the United States and unable to attend the memorial where he’d been asked to be a pallbearer.

“It can come out in acting out in society. It can come out in depression. It can come out in relationships with other people. But humans have a deep need to grieve loss like this in the community. It’s spiritual, it’s physical, it’s emotional, it’s a communal need and it starts to affect community if you can’t grieve.”

Two days after Vanhartskamp’s memorial, the Bereavement Authority of Ontario, which is responsible for administering provisions of the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act on behalf of the provincial government, released an announcement advising that “funeral homes keep gatherings to 50 or less, not counting staff, for funerals and visitations.”

Joyce Carpenter said she was pleased her nephew received a proper, respectful send-off from the community that held him in esteem.

“There were a lot of people (at the Sunday visitation in a downtown funeral home) who were intoxicated, but they were all there on Monday and every damn one of them was sober,” said Carpenter, who does not allow alcohol in her west-end home.

“I thought Christopher would be happy and a little bit shocked to know they all sobered up to celebrate him leaving this earth. They came sober to say their final goodbye.”

What does that tell her?

“How much he was loved.”