Advocates say domestic violence is increasing in rural Ontario but a lack of adequate transportation and a housing crisis is putting the lives of more women at risk.
Multiple rural shelters contacted by CBC News are operating at full capacity heading into 2025 and are turning women and children away.
“A lot of women in rural areas actually have no access to help. The isolation, the distance away from towns and police makes it very difficult for people to reach out,” said Diane Harris, executive director of Domestic Abuse Services Oxford (DASO), east of London.
“We get a number of calls every day and we can’t accommodate them here, so we’re trying to do referrals out into the community, but the housing crisis also limits us. That’s what scares me for women’s lives.”
DASO is the only emergency crisis shelter in Oxford County, with one long-term transitional housing program and one part-time sexual violence counsellor. It serves a population of 128,000 in eight municipalities and several small towns, ranging from Tillsonburg to Stratford to Paris.
“We are a very large geographic area and we don’t have any buses to different municipalities,” said Harris. “People have to rely on their own way of getting here. If we have an emergency we try to send out a cab but that doesn’t always work, so people without cars can’t make it here.”
As demand for crisis services continues to rise, not having enough resources puts a lot of pressure on rural shelters and can be a life or death matter for those trying to seek safety, said Harris.
Shelters a ‘systemic bottleneck’
Marlene Ham, executive director of the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH), says shelters were only meant to be an emergency measure but due to systemic barriers, are filling in the gap for other services. (Francis Ferland/CBC)
The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) tracks monthly and annual femicides in the province reported by media. It gave CBC News a breakdown of femicides between 2018 and 2023, which showed that small and rural communities, with a population less than 30,000, made up almost 20 per cent of femicides over the past five years, or 48 deaths.
OAITH breaks Ontario down into east, Toronto, central, north and west region, which includes Owen Sound, Windsor, Niagara, Hamilton and Cambridge. There have been 18 femicides in the west region since last year, said OAITH’s head Marlene Ham, adding the numbers are likely an underestimation.
“We need to understand the service levels that exist in rural communities and the complexities with where services are located and how they can be accessed. Living in one community while services are elsewhere and leaving it to go to another one might not be possible,” said Ham.
Ham said shelters were designed for emergencies but are now having to fill in the gaps of other services, calling it a “systemic bottleneck,” worsened by a shortage of affordable housing.
The Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network says approximately 699 women and 236 accompanying children are turned away from domestic violence shelters across Canada every day.
Liz Brown is executive director at Valora Place in Elgin County. She says the province declaring IPV an epidemic and implementing recommendations from the Renfrew Inquest would allow for better education and prevention efforts for gender-based violence. (Isha Bhargava/CBC)
“If we’re experiencing harm in our home and it’s on a rural route outside of town, no one is going to hear us scream,” said Liz Brown of Valora Place shelter in Elgin County, south of London.
“You can drive around Elgin county and there are tons of pockets where there’s no cell phone reception. The closest person to you can be a ten-minute walk or an hour, that’s a very specific kind of geographic isolation.”
Valora Place’s coverage includes St. Thomas, Dutton, Rodney, New Glasgow, Port Burwell and Aylmer. Since COVID, the number of people using its services has doubled from 1,500 to about 3,000 but funding and the amount of resources have stayed the same, said Brown.
Declare Intimate Partner Violence an epidemic
Two women were murdered in Elgin County this year, said Brown. One of them was Tanya Wiebe, a 38-year-old mom of a teenage son, whose partner killed her and later took his own life — on a rural route in Sparta, about 13 minutes from the shelter, said Brown.
The other, Victoria Dill, 40, was found with a life-threatening gunshot wound at a property where there was an active house fire in July and later died in hospital. Two men are awaiting trial for second-degree murder and arson charges.
Brown said the 86 recommendations from the Renfrew Inquest laid a good roadmap of how women fleeing abuse in rural communities can be supported. It followed the 2015 murders of three women in Renfrew County, who were all murdered on the same day by the same man.
“Even if the first 10 [recommendations] can be implemented, things will be a lot different. Governments need to count this data and call it what it is. It’s within our grasp to do so,” she said.
Advocates also want Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) to be recognized as a province-wide epidemic so there can be mandated community safety plans to improve education and prevention efforts. Ninety-five municipalities in Ontario and six provinces have all declared it an epidemic.
A spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services said in an emailed statement that government supported the NDP’s Bill 173 to declare IPV an epidemic and has referred it to a standing committee on justice policy for an in-depth review.
“The committee is carefully assessing available programs and root causes of intimate partner violence to better understand the current system needs and improvements,” the statement said.
The province is also reinvesting $3.6 million into the Rural and Remote Services and Supports Initiative, which it says will help rural frontline agencies collaborate with each other and reduce geographic and transportation barriers for women in need of services and supports.
As part of Ontario’s four-year action plan to end gender-based violence, it’s investing $1.4 billion, coupled with federal investment of $162 million to help organizations to hire more staff and expand services.
Enhancing technology, breaking silos
Karen Vecchio, the Conservative MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London, is former chair of the House of Commons’ standing committee on the status of women. She said improving technology like the Red Dress Alert in Manitoba and expanding it across communities in Canada can reduce barriers to service
“Sometimes you may not get an alert because of where you’re living. The fact that we’re not as connected here in Canada as we should be is something we as a government really need to focus on because we know in other parts of the world, GPS isn’t an issue,” she said.
Vecchio said silos between provincial and federal governments make it hard for community organizations to access crucial funding because Ottawa can’t direct how provinces spend money.
“Shelters don’t have operational funding, so they’re always looking for that through fundraisers. The federal government can do observations but can’t recommend to provincial governments what they need to do. Core funding is needed so [shelters] can focus on helping people,” she said.
DASO’s Harris and other shelter leaders have asked the province for $1.2 million over three years to create a femicide leadership table who can teach community members how to recognize signs of IPV and respond effectively, she said.
For anyone affected by family or intimate partner violence, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services. If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.