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Rabble-rousers Against Frostbite wants this kind of information to be collected and shared and action taken to reduce such injuries
Published Jan 14, 2026 • Last updated 5 hours ago • 5 minute read
Jack Frost not only nips at noses but can take off entire tips, along with toes and fingers, and can even cause death. It’s a particular risk for the unhoused population that has to tough it out during winter in these parts. SUBMITTEDArticle content
Jack Frost not only nips at noses but can take off entire tips, along with toes and fingers, and can even cause death.
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It’s a particular risk for the unhoused population that has to tough it out during winter in these parts. Yet stats on injury and mortality from extreme cold are not systematically collected or reported, making it difficult to measure the scope of the hazard and allocate appropriate resources.
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A local retiree and self-described rabble-rouser is leading a campaign to change that.
“I believe we need the data,” said Holland Marshall. “We need to know how many people are having serious frostbite, how many are getting amputations, losing their toes or a complete foot or their fingers.
And we need to know how many have died.”
Marshall said he met a homeless man in Memorial Park last summer who had lost four fingertips and two toes from exposure to cold over the previous two winters.
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“It kept bothering me, because I kept thinking, what’s going to happen to him this winter?” he said.
“Then I got a photograph sent to me of a man whose fingertips are all black, so he’s going to have to have those amputated.”
Meanwhile, his wife encountered an older man panhandling outside the Food Basics in the south end.
“When she gave him some change, she noticed the tips of the fingers on his left hand are all missing,” he said.
In a letter he sent to The Star, Marshall characterized this kind of suffering as a “hidden tragedy,” given there is no inventory to show its prevalence and the public is only made aware of it when they encounter a victim in person.
“I worked in management,” said the former Nortel supervisor. “The big rule there is that if you didn’t measure something, it wasn’t important. And if you don’t measure it, you don’t know if you are making any progress.”
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Public Health Sudbury and Districts agrees that there is not enough information on winter wounding, but not because the agency is uninterested. Indeed, it would welcome the chance to document and publish timely stats.
“Cold-related injuries are diagnosed by a range of health-care and other agencies, including emergency departments, urgent-care centres, primary-care providers, shelters, and many others,” the health unit said in a statement, but “this data is not reported to Public Health, nor does Public Health have the authority to collect it.”
PHSD said it does eventually receive some data on frostbite injuries through statistical agencies, but it isn’t available until “several months later” and “does not help inform the acute situation on the ground.”
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The main source of data is the Acute Care Enhanced Surveillance System, which “collates how emergency departments are triaging patients,” said the health unit. This is useful, but far from comprehensive.
“It does not indicate what was the ultimate diagnosis of a patient (what is triaged is often not ultimately correct once a patient is formally assessed),” said Public Health. “As well, it looks only at emergency departments and excludes the many more patients who are likely seen at urgent care, primary care, and health-care providers associated with shelters or social services. And it also excludes many people who may never present to health care.”
The coroner’s office collects data on cold-related deaths, but this info “is not routinely shared publicly, nor with Public Health,” the agency said, and it only speaks to fatalities, not injuries.
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PHSD said it supports “the creation of a more complete, centralized, timely and public reporting system for cold-related injuries or deaths,” which would enable both it and other health units “to gain a better understanding of the scope of the issue, particularly during a current winter season.”
Marshall has launched a group he named Rabble-rousers Against Frostbite. It’s a “loose group of citizens” that counts about eight members at present, he said, most of them in Sudbury, but also one in North Bay and another in Toronto.
“I’ve been sending out requests to all the MPPs in Northern Ontario to either meet with me in person or have a phone call, and eventually I want to get to all of Ontario,” he said. “My focus is we need the data. We have the data on opioid overdose and death; we need the data on people in the winter freezing to death or having half their fingers taken off.”
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Once that is readily available to the media and in an online form, citizens can study themselves, Marshall believes it can lead to some concerted action to spare further suffering.
“We can say, hey, please stop this,” he said. “So if your husband or kids or grandchildren go out there and become homeless, at least they aren’t going to freeze to death.”
Marshall said he received a prompt and supportive response from Sudbury MPP Jamie West. Vic Fedeli, the Conservative MPP for Nipissing, has not been quite so supportive as yet, he said, but other Northern politicians are also getting on board.
“I don’t think anything will happen until next October as far as changing regulations, so this winter is a write-off, but hopefully by next winter there will be something in place,” he said.
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For PHSD and other health units to become the central recipients of frostbite data, “new provincial legislation would be needed requiring that primary care, hospitals, urgent-care centres, shelters, and similar organizations report all cold-related injuries to public health,” the agency said. “This approach would mirror the legislation that exists requiring the reporting of certain infectious disease to Public Health.”
Health units would also need additional funding “to develop the data infrastructure and to have the staffing to analyze and report on this data publicly,” said PHSD.
Given recent interest in this topic, the local health unit said it has begun discussions with the Office of the Chief Coroner to see what might be possible to access through them.
“We hope to further explore what can be done within existing authorities and budget,” the agency said. “However, this exploration will take time, and we are uncertain if much more will ultimately be possible.”
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