Man dies in Halifax parkade
HALIFAX — About four or five years ago, Chris Redden left the emergency room without a diagnosis for his stomach pain.
As the pain got worse over time, the Halifax resident refused to go back to the hospital because of how he was initially treated.
“He eventually lost his job because he was too sick to work,” Shelagh Sutherland said in a recent interview.
Sutherland met Redden through mutual friends in Wolfville in the early 1990s.
“I considered him part of my Wolfville family,” Sutherland said, describing Redden as a soft, polite, empathetic individual.
“And then when I moved to Halifax towards the end of the ’90s, he had moved as well and was living with one of my best friends,” she said. “Our lives were always aligning.”
As many people do, the pair grew apart as they aged. But from time to time, Redden would reach out to his Wolfville friends.
“He did better than the rest of us at keeping in touch, to be totally honest,” Sutherland said.
Redden would often call his friends until Facebook became a thing. Then, he stayed in contact with his friends through Messenger.
But near the end of December, Redden suddenly stopped playing an online word game he had been playing almost daily with a friend. Then, a community navigator with the Halifax Central Library noticed Redden was missing.
On Dec. 29, 2022, Redden’s body was found in a parkade in Halifax. He was 51.
The news about Redden’s passing came as a shock to Sutherland and her friends, especially since they were unaware he had been homeless for roughly the past four years.
“We found out this has been an ongoing years-long secret that we didn’t know about,” Sutherland said.
Sutherland said many had talked to Redden over the years and he never mentioned he was living on the streets, getting food from the snack program at the Halifax Central Library and Sunday supper program at St. Andrew’s United Church.
“I think there’s a huge pride factor there,” she said.
“He just didn’t want to be a bother. It’s really a lesson of checking on the quiet ones.”
The cause of Redden’s death has yet to be determined pending autopsy results.
But Sutherland and others believe Redden could have lived a longer life if it wasn’t for his experience at the emergency room years ago that ultimately resulted in him living on the streets.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” she said. “It piles on one person more and more and how do you get out of that?”
In Redden’s honour, Sutherland has launched a GoFundMe page, which had nearly $1,000 in donations as of Wednesday afternoon. Money raised will go to the Halifax Central Library “to be used for food and housing insecurity programs as determined by the community navigators.”
“Chris had a super sad end to a super sad story,” Sutherland said.
“If we can save one person, we’re good. That’s all we want.”