Nicole Chantal Pauluzzo says she almost lost two of her fingers to frostbite last month while trying to stay warm in a bus shelter in Thunder Bay, Ont. Temperatures reached -47 C with the wind chill, she said, during a cold spell which saw the northwestern Ontario city enact a severe weather response.
“You can lose your hands over it,” said Pauluzzo, who’s been experiencing homelessness off and on since 2022, of frostbite. “I saw three people lose their fingers over it.” On Tuesday night, Thunder Bay’s city council voted in favour of declaring homelessness as a humanitarian crisis.