Hamilton man urges return of library card pilot after brother’s fatal overdose

A Hamilton man whose brother died of a drug overdose at the downtown public library says he wants to see changes at the branch to prevent something like this from happening again.

He’s in favour of the controversial pilot project from earlier this year that saw the space restricted to those with a valid library card.

The library board saying that the project decreased the amount of suspected overdoses requiring naloxone by 90 percent.

“Very kind, loving, gentle, very gentle person,” Jacob Metcalf says about his brother, Joshua.

Standing in the library where his older brother overdosed six months ago, Jacob Metcalf describes him as a gentle person who was always involved in a political cause.

“He loved libraries, loved this library. As he got older he was coming down here all the time, almost every day,” says Metcalf.

Joshua Hughes was 36-year-old in January when he overdosed in a washroom at the Hamilton Public Library’s Central Branch.

“He went in there, obviously took some drugs. He was more so a crystal meth user so the fentanyl, that was fatal, wouldn’t have been expected for him. He never came out. He collapsed and the two people who were in there with him didn’t bother to do anything,” says Metcalf.

He says around 20 minutes later, a library user found his brother in cardiac arrest. He was administered naloxone and taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Jacob says his brother struggled with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder throughout his life and turned to drugs.

While he was housed most of the time — living with their mother in Hamilton — he also frequented the public library as a place to buy and consume drugs.

“He would come down here as a place to get drugs, purchase them, consume them, and meet other people in that same community,” says Metcalf.

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That’s not a surprise to many Hamiltonians who have visited the central branch in recent years.

The issue of suspected overdoses and illegal drug use became so prominent that the library closed its doors on Sundays and reduced its daily hours.

Then it rolled out a two-month pilot project that restricted access to the space to people with a library card.

A report about the results of the project say the need for naloxone — a potentially life-saving drug for opioid overdoses — decreased by more than 90 percent during the pilot, compared to earlier in the year.

The library says it was previously averaging -more than 17 incidents that required naloxone per month. That’s more frequent than an incident every other day.

“I was going up to the bathroom where he was found, and without the pilot program there were people going in there and I was worried it was going to happen again – the people I’m seeing going in and out, I couldn’t believe it,” says Metcalf. “And then when I came back and the pilot program was implemented, I wasn’t concerned at all anymore.”

The pilot project was met with vocal opposition from groups saying it discriminates against newcomers, visitors and the city’s homeless population. Especially since libraries are used as cooling and warming centres during periods of extreme weather.

But Metcalf is advocating to bring it back.

“I mean, there’s a chance that if the program had been permanent when josh went, maybe it wouldn’t have happened to josh. Some people have said ‘well if it didn’t happen here, it could happen somewhere else’ and that might be true, but the fact is it did happen here. And this isn’t the place for that,” says Jacob.

At this point, the library has made no plans to reinstate the program, telling CHCH News that it serves as “one of several operational tools that could be considered in the future.”

The library will also reopen its doors on Sundays starting in July. Officials say there have been two suspected overdoses at the central branch since the pilot project ended mid-May.

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