The retired truck driver says he can no longer afford to stay in hotels, but wants to remain close to his wife while she’s in hospital.
People in the town of Smiths Falls are rallying around a 78-year-old man who has been sleeping in his car for much of the past four months while his wife is treated in a nearby hospital.
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Dave Harmer parked his orange Ford Edge SUV in the lot of a Tim Hortons coffee shop on Highway 7 because the restaurant is open 24 hours a day and is close to the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital, where his wife, Millie, 88, is recovering from two strokes and a broken hip.
In an interview Friday, Harmer said he was deeply grateful for the help he had received in the week since sharing his story with a clerk at a Canadian Tire gas bar in Smiths Falls.
“It makes you feel like you are somebody,” said Harmer, who uses a cane and suffers from arthritis.
Harmer said he exhausted his savings during the past 14 months to pay for motels after a fire at his seniors’ residence in Elgin, Ont. last September forced him out of the home he shared with Millie, his wife of 26 years.
A retired Nortel truck driver — he also claims to have spent 10 years in the Canadian military as a quartermaster at CFB Petawawa — Harmer said he relied mainly on Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security payments to make ends meet.
He was forced to sleep in the front seat of his car for most of the past four months, he said, since he could no longer afford to pay for both his car and a motel room in Perth. Harmer kept warm by running his car or going into Tim Hortons.
“It was getting a little frosty,” he said of life in his car. “It’s not a life I’d want anyone to consider because it’s no damn good … I’m pretty strong-willed — it takes a lot to bring me down — but this has been a nightmare.”
Smiths Falls Mayor Shawn Pankow learned of the man’s plight after gas bar attendant Peggy Tye-Bernicky posted a Facebook appeal on Harmer’s behalf. Pankow put Harmer in touch with the Royal Canadian Legion and reached out to several local landlords in an attempt to find him an affordable place to live.
Harmer is to view an apartment on Monday.
“He’s just the victim of circumstance, unfortunately,” Pankow said Friday. “But it’s encouraging that someone here took the time to listen to him. Someone cared.”
Tye-Bernicky says she met Harmer a week ago when he came into her Smiths Falls store to pay for a tank of gas. He told her, “I just can’t do it anymore.”
“I said, ‘You can’t do what, sir?’ He said, ‘I can’t live like this anymore.’”
Harmer explained how he had spent much of the past four months in his car to be close to his ailing wife.
Tye-Bernicky, a former social worker, connected Harmer with social services and posted an appeal on her Facebook page. “We’ve been receiving donations at the gas station for him: new socks, gas cards,” she said.
Lanark County social services moved Harmer into a Perth motel earlier this past week.
Keith Anderson, the veterans’ service officer at the Smiths Falls Legion, said he was trying to confirm Harmer’s status as a veteran, which would make him eligible for financial support under the legion’s homeless veteran’s program.
Harmer doesn’t remember his regimental number and says documents establishing his service record were damaged in the September 2021 fire.
“Until he gives me some information which I can confirm through Veterans Affairs, there’s not really a lot I can do to help him financially,” Anderson said.
Harmer said he grew up in Kingston, attended Rideau District High School, then worked in construction, the military and trucking before retiring to Elgin with his wife, Millie.
365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4
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