New network hopes to create conversation around death and dying in Hamilton

Original article by Fallon Hewitt published in The Hamilton Spectator on October 30, 2023.

An event hosted by Compassionate Hamilton is hoping to spur a city-wide conversation surrounding death.

But it’s not a discussion that would stop at mortality, said Dr. Erin Gallagher, a local palliative care physician and organizer with the newly formed network.

Instead, it would look at how death, dying, loss, grief and bereavement are experienced in Steeltown — and the kinds of gaps people are seeing and feeling during those times.

“We’re still very much a death-denying society,” Gallagher said in an interview. “People aren’t talking about these things despite them being universal to us.”

The event, Living in the Gap, will be a first for the network, which brings together a number of agencies and community groups.

Gallagher said Compassionate Hamilton does not provide services, but instead will act as a “collective consciousness” for the community to improve the well-being of those near end of life.

That means looking beyond the walls of health-care facilities for those answers, she noted.

“You need very specific things in place in order to live well until the end,” Gallagher said. “But if no one is talking about them, how are we going to get those things in place?”

That conversation is slated to start during the event, which will feature dozens of local exhibitors as well as a panel discussion with speakers from Keeping Six Hamilton, “The Waiting Room Revolution” podcast and the McNally House Hospice.

Gallagher said the event will hinge on three questions: How is death, dying and loss experienced in Hamilton? What are the gaps? And what are some of the potential solutions?

Those queries will be answered by the exhibitors afterwards in a survey, said Gallagher, the results of which will be used to create a report and further the conversation around potential community-based resources.

Beyond that report, Gallagher is hopeful that the network can eventually effect change in the community — whether through policy change or making conversations around death “more acceptable.”

“That’s the vision,” said Gallagher.

The free event runs from 4 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 1 at the First Unitarian Church of Hamilton, 170 Dundurn St. S.