Canadian man’s death example of veterans’ struggles returning home: advocate

(R) Benjamin Van Eck (Credit: Susan Patterson)

Posted November 11, 2021 8:27 pm.

Last Updated November 12, 2021 8:15 am.

Canadian veteran Benjamin Van Eck can only be described as honourable, kind, full of manners and overall, a “good human being” by his loved ones. However, his friends say his death is an example of Canada’s failure to care for the people who have served our country.

Van Eck was 40-years-old when he died alone on the streets of London, Ontario, last June.

Susan Patterson and Annissa Crimp are both shelter workers and friends of Van Eck. When they heard about his passing, they were heartbroken.

“I’m disgusted. He died in the streets after surviving two tours in Afghanistan, heroin addiction and enemy fire. And he died on his own soil. Found dead in the street like a dog,” Patterson says.

“We let him down. Canada let this fellow down. It’s really sad. Our country’s broken. We’re really broken.”

Before his death, Van Eck lost his pension and was in desperate need of housing, but he didn’t know how to navigate the system.

“Even though he was a soldier — and I don’t know if it was because of addiction — it was very upsetting to me that Veteran Affairs was able to blow him off so easily and cut his pension off,” Patterson explains. “I would think, as a soldier, he’d be swinging back but he felt defeated in his own country, and he was embarrassed. I think he felt shame. So he let it go.

“But he came to me.”

Patterson spent hours on the phone helping him for about two weeks making phone calls and says they were “passing the buck.”

“So I started asking for higher-ups,” she says. “I demanded that.”

Eventually, she was able to get him a bed at an opiate detox treatment center which Veterans Affairs Canada paid for. And Van Eck’s pension was reinstated.

“It wasn’t much, but he deserved it. It was his. He earned it,” Patterson tells City News.

story on @CityNewsVAN: I’m speaking w/Susan Patterson, a shelter worker who knew Benjamin Van Eck. Van Eck was found dead on the street in London, Ont. in June. She’s upset b/c he managed to come home from active duty, but died in his own country. More @ https://t.co/9qkQp9qzfu pic.twitter.com/4wd1Muk76E

— Ria Renouf (@riarenouf) November 12, 2021

The last time Van Eck friends Patterson and Crimp saw him was at the shelter.

“Last I knew, he got some help from the folks at the shelter, and they were even visiting him in hospital. He was trying to get his health back on track. And that’s the last we’d heard of him until now,” Crimp says.

‘Benjamin is just one.’

Patterson and Crimp are just two of the many people who are, at the grassroots level, trying to help veterans connect to services – whether it’s housing or signing up for financial benefits.

In the past year, Vets Canada — a non-profit charity helping ex-military and RCMP officers — has seen 450 people reach out for assistance. On an average year, the organization helps around 350 to 600 people.

Debbie Lowther is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vets Canada and echoes the barriers veterans face.

“We’ve seen when a landlord looks at them and sees that they are a veteran. Sometimes they automatically assume that all veterans have PTSD, and that they might be dangerous in some way or form,” she says as an example.

“And veterans are struggling to get their benefits … Veterans Affairs has quite a backlog. So it takes a while for them to get their benefits in place. So that’s where we come into kind of help bridge that gap a little bit and get them through until those benefits kick in.”

And the COVID-19 pandemic has also been added to the list of challenges.

“Lots of times if we are dealing with a veteran who is homeless, and we want to get them off the streets, lots of times we’ll use hotels as temporary accommodations. And what we found during the pandemic is that a lot of cities were using hotels to house the overflow of the homeless … the capacity of shelters was lower, so cities were using hotels. So it made it challenging for us to find space for our veterans.”

Vets Canada has also had to shift to relying on virtual services out of precaution.

Because of the “cumbersome” process, Lowther says it makes seeking services that much harder for older vets and those grappling with their mental health.

Lower says from the paperwork to the long phone calls where people are put on hold and transferred, “people get discouraged.”

“Especially if we’re dealing with somebody who’s already struggling with their mental health, they just give up, and they don’t pursue it,” she says.

While the lack of affordable housing impacts veterans finding shelter, Nadia Tchoumi at Union Gospel Mission adds that mental health services are vital.

“Housing, of course, is important, just to restore a sense of dignity for these national heroes who fought for this country,” she says, but adds, “We know that for many veterans, they might struggle with PTSD. And for those even within our network, they have shared with us their own struggle with addiction and mental health. And so we know it’s so important to have those wraparound services.”

Patterson says she wants more government resources, like funding — something Lower adds has constantly been a struggle for Vets Canada.

“For us, for example, we do receive some funding from Veterans Affairs Canada, but it’s a constant battle … honestly, having to worry about that constantly does take away from being able to focus on that direct support. So I think making funding a little bit more accessible would be a great step.”