Homeless man who overdosed in Parade Square liked helping others: ‘He just had a big heart’

The Halifax man who died in hospital Dec. 15 after overdosing in a tent in Parade Square was kind and often helped his homeless neighbours, according to a street navigator who knew him well.

Volunteers found Bradley Lowe unconscious and called 911. They tried to revive him with naloxone and a defibrillator. Paramedics took the 30-year-old to the Infirmary, but he did not survive.

“In the midst of his struggle, he was very selfless,” said Lucas Goltz, who works with the Street Navigator Outreach Program.

“A lot of people who heard about his passing pretty quickly said, ‘Bradley — the last time I saw him he gave me his last gift card,’ or ‘He used some of his last money to buy me a meal because I was hungry.’ He would often go without so that other people could be taken care of. So that’s really kind of the legacy that he’s left at Vic Park, where he was living. He’s left a big hole in a lot of people’s hearts.”

‘We want Bradleys around’

While he doesn’t want to see anyone living in tents, Lowe was the kind of guy Goltz likes having around.

“If people are going to be there, we want Bradleys around because they’re helpers. They’re looking out for people. They’re connecting with others, and these other people need connection. So, Bradley, he just had a big heart, and so I think he just naturally did that,” Goltz said.

“He definitely had that in him to want to be a good neighbour and to show love and compassion and empathy to others who were struggling just like he was.”

While he overdosed in front of City Hall, Lowe had been living in a red ice shelter at Victoria Park, Goltz said.

“I had just recently put him into one of those because his old spring/summer tent was falling apart after all of the storms and snow. So, we moved him into one of those and I was actually supposed to be moving him into some housing this past Monday.”

Avid reader

Lowe was an avid reader and often spotted carrying books about self-improvement.

“Because he didn’t see himself staying where he was,” Goltz said.

“Some of my clients can’t see a way out. Bradley didn’t see himself staying there.”

Lowe had been living rough at Victoria Park for months, “but he had been experiencing homelessness, off and on, for several years,” Goltz said.

He hadn’t moved his ice shelter to Grand Parade.

“A lot of guys just go back and forth. They have friends that live in other encampments, so they go to visit. More recently, Grand Parade has had a lot more supplies.”

‘His biggest motivation’

Lowe had a son and spoke of him frequently, Goltz said.

“That was probably his biggest motivation to get out of where he found himself. It was his motivation to get healthy. It was his motivation to get back on his feet, and he was.

“When I first met Bradley, he was really struggling with his mental health and his addictions, but last week, when I saw him, I had actually commented to him, saying, ‘You’re doing so well. I can tell. I can tell in our conversations. I can tell just looking at you.’”

“Thanks for noticing,” Lowe responded.

“I’ve been trying really hard to get out of this place. I don’t want to be here. I want to be there for my boy and come back at some point in the future and be able to help people.”

That midday conversation took place a few hours before Lowe died.

“I’m from the West Coast where, obviously, we were dealing with a lot of this stuff long before it kind of made its way here,” Goltz said.

“It’s stuff like carfentanyl, which is really toxic.”

‘Russian roulette’

Veterinarians use the potent opioid to anesthetize large animals, but Goltz is not sure that’s the drug that killed Lowe.

“It could have been he went back to use and just took too much,” Goltz said.

“He was often pretty good at using around people who would be able to look out for him. . . . It doesn’t seem like that happened this time. It’s always a bit of Russian roulette when people are using on the streets because they don’t know what’s in it unless they have a tester kit that can show them that it’s clean.”

Mainline Needle Exchange and Direction 180 in the city’s north end can test drugs purchased on the street, Goltz said.

“A lot of guys, they get the drugs and they’re pretty keen to use right away,” he said.

“They’re going to kind of bypass the testing and get right into using.”

Brought cheerfulness

Lowe was a tall, handsome man with a winning smile.

“I’m a pretty tall guy and I had to look up at him,” Goltz said.

“He was pretty fit and often a pretty happy guy. He would just bring that cheerfulness and that joy with him wherever he went.”

Goltz wrestles with the conundrum of why dealers are selling drugs that might kill their customers.

“I don’t think our dealers know what’s in their drugs,” he said.

“If you kill a client, you have less money coming in. And if you’re a drug dealer, you want to make money. That’s the name of the game. So, it doesn’t make sense for them to put it in.”

Class action

Lowe had worked in construction and wanted to get back to it, Goltz said.

“The more recent thing that he was attending to was working with a lawyer at Pink Larkin who was working on a larger class action suit against (the Department of Community Services) so that people could get their full cheque.”

Goltz is planning to attend a memorial service Friday in Lower Sackville for Lowe.

“It’s pretty rough, if I’m honest,” he said. “It’s probably the part of the job I hate the most.”

While he attended “countless” funerals for people who overdosed in Vancouver and Victoria, this will be his first since he moved to Nova Scotia seven months ago.

‘High hopes’

Hundreds of people are living rough around the city.

“I think there were a lot of us who had high hopes when the conversation started back in the summertime about (how) there’s going to be a lot of people in tents this winter, so let’s have some plans in place,” Goltz said.

“There were some hopes that the conversation started early enough so there would be more movement. But there hasn’t been; there’s not been enough movement to open up some more shelters.

“I understand the logistics of that is not easy because we don’t have enough service providers in the city to really man some new shelters even if we did open them up. People are feeling pretty low. There’s a lot of despair on the streets. I’ve never seen the level of despair and hopelessness that I currently do see from my clients.”

Lowe had spoken about “getting clean,” Goltz said.

“He wobbled back and forth between believing he could do it himself and coming to the realization that he probably couldn’t. That’s pretty typical for a lot of my clients. There’s a belief in themselves that they can beat what they’re fighting against. My experience is that very few people can do that. Usually, they do need a good program to help them really kind of reset and reprogram their minds in a lot of ways.”

Lowe’s obituary asked people to donate in his name to The Helm, a one-year, faith-based addiction recovery centre for men in Glen Haven.

“His dad actually reached out through an email to let us know that he was doing that because he grew up in a Godly home and because he had tried to recover before unsuccessfully,” said Dawn Bralovich, one of the directors.

“Something about what we do at the Helm resonated with his family and they thought that it would be something that he would want.”