THUNDER BAY — “Addiction is not a choice.”
Kyle Arnold knows this, not only first-hand, but also through his years of helping innumerable clients through his wide-ranging work in addictions support and harm reduction in Thunder Bay.
“Addiction is a root of a problem which generally comes from trauma — and a lot of trauma at that,” he continued.
“I never woke up and decided I wanted to be a drug addict … unfortunately, the drugs were a solution at the time for me to be able to deal with the trauma and the pain that I had gone through.”
And nowadays, he said, that “solution” is a lot more deadly.
Arnold is now the program coordinator at P.A.C.E. (People Advocating for Change through Empowerment) and Long Lake 58 First Nation’s community support worker specializing in addictions. He also has a lot of experience with drug testing, and told Newswatch the current supply is even more laced with additives like animal tranquilizers, medications used to deworm cows and “it seems like anything that's available under a counter.”
That changes how overdoses look, he said, including how they can be treated.
“It's putting them in a state that we're not used to,” he said. “When you used Naloxone back in the day, you would Naloxone someone they would pop right back up and they were good to go.”
“But now, it's very hard. You're using multiple Naloxones — I would say close to six to nine Naloxones at a time — and even after that, all you're getting is a pulse again,” Arnold continued.
“They're not actually coming out of it, essentially — they're still quite sedated, but you are getting a pulse letting you know that they are breathing again.”
Despite this, Arnold said people should still carry Naloxone and really learn how to use it properly. He credited agencies like NorWest Community Health Centres for the work they do in that type of education.
Recent data from the Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner shows Thunder Bay, again, has the highest rate of deaths due to opioid toxicity of any city in Ontario, at nearly five times the provincial average. The Thunder Bay District Health Unit has said fentanyl was the opioid responsible for almost every one of those deaths — and said in some cases, users weren’t even aware it was present.
A health unit official told Newswatch that street drugs in the city “are contaminated” and “do not necessarily represent what people are looking for.”
All of this means more pressure on frontline workers, like Arnold, tasked with trying to reverse the effects of these drug poisonings.
“It's really forced us to look a lot deeper in our skills, understanding how to check for that pulse because that person isn't just waking up essentially anymore,” Arnold said. “They're staying very, very sedated.”
Arnold said frontline workers are relying a lot more on partner doctors and nurses to refresh and enhance first aid training. He added other changes in what he does include carrying a fingertip pulse oximeter — a device that is placed on a person’s fingertip to detect a pulse — as well as attempting to attend overdoses with a partner, so they can better respond to any complications.
This comes at a time when the city’s main outlet for drug testing, NorWest Community Health Centres’ Path 525, was shut down by the province, along with nine others. Path 525 was the only safe consumption site in northern Ontario.
Funding was announced earlier in 2025 for NorWest to have outreach workers visit vulnerable populations to offer drug checking services. Arnold said he’s not aware of how drug testing is currently working in the city, but said, in talking to clients, “the frustration level is definitely there.”
“It makes them extremely nervous, and essentially it's really playing Russian roulette now with the drugs that are on the streets,” he said.
The current situation, Arnold said, underscores the need for much more addictions treatment and mental health supports.
“I have five to 10 people a day come up to me that would go into treatment tomorrow, but when I go and I apply for their treatment, they're waiting three to four months, and by the time that day comes, they've moved on or they're not here anymore,” he said.
“I think as a province, as a country, we need more resources, not only abstinence-based treatment, but things like the safer supply program.”
“Things like Path 525.”
This story is part of a special feature on opioid deaths in Thunder Bay and the region.