A coroner’s inquest into the deaths of two people killed in a fire at a single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel in downtown Vancouver more than a year ago began Monday.
Mary Ann Garlow, 63, and Dennis James Guay, 53, died in the blaze that razed the Winters Hotel in Gastown on April 11, 2022. Five people were hospitalized and more than 140 were displaced.
In addition to the SRO, the four-storey heritage building on Abbott and Water streets contained a women’s shelter and seven businesses. Its demolition began about 10 days after the fire, which is when Garlow and Guay’s remains were found.
The inquest is scheduled for two weeks at the B.C. Coroner’s court in Burnaby.
Garlow’s niece, Misty Fredericks, was the first to testify. She told the jury her aunt’s son John also lived in the Winters Hotel and jumped out of his third-storey room to escape the fire, shattering both legs and requiring a six-month hospital stay.
Fredericks said it would be too difficult for John to testify but he wanted the jury to know how much he loved his mom, and that there were “chains on the door, the sprinklers didn’t work and there was no way out.”
“Mary was his caregiver, always looking out for his well-being, ensuring he was safe and fed. The love for her son is what saved John’s life,” Fredericks told the jury.
“It was Mary who made the ultimate motherly sacrifice by making sure her son jumped out the window before the last moments of her life.”
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services has said it believed unattended candles were the cause of the blaze that began on the second residential floor and moved upward from there.
The building’s sprinklers, however, were turned off at the time due to a fire in a unit on April 8, which the sprinklers had extinguished. Fire crews issued a notice of violation to the property’s owner — Atira Women’s Resource Society — to have the fire safety systems serviced and put the building under a fire watch until that work was complete.
The property manager originally said it was believed all residents had escaped.
Family and friends of Garlow and Guay have said they have unanswered questions about the tragedy, including why it took so long for officials to realize they were missing and find them.
According to the City of Vancouver, firefighters performed a primary search for occupants of the Winters Hotel when it first went up in flames. Normally, a second search is performed, but in their “defensive attack,” firefighters exited the building to fight the flames from outside and it was “too dangerous” to allow them to search the second floor and above.
Guay and Garlow were found after demolition began on April 20. Experts told the inquest that DNA from family members was used to confirm the identity of the victims.
Fredericks testified she was told her aunt’s friends were concerned that she hadn’t been seen, and missing person posters were created.
“(A friend) was at the site protesting and trying to stop demolition of the structural remains of the hotel. She had put some type of banner on the protective fencing and was yelling towards the machine operator to, ‘Stop, she’s in there,’” she said.
A coroner’s inquest into Garlow and Guay’s deaths was ordered in July 2022, with Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth stating that recommendations from such an inquest could help save lives and prevent future SRO fires.
“As the number of fire-related deaths increases in British Columbia, it is imperative that we take action to ensure vulnerable people are protected from fire hazards,” Farnworth said at the time.
The inquest will not make a determination of fault, but determine the facts related to the deaths, including the causes and circumstances. The inquests are designed to ensure public confidence that the circumstances will not be overlooked, concealed or ignored.
Nearly 30 witnesses are scheduled to testify at the inquest ending Feb. 1, including doctors, police and fire officials. Legal counsel for the victims’ families, the City of Vancouver, the B.C. government, Winters Residence Ltd., BC Housing, the Management Commission, and Atira are all expected to attend.
On Monday, a statement was read aloud to the jury on behalf of Guay’s family, describing his love of chess and backgammon. His mother, father and sister sat in tears in the front row of the courtroom.
“The grieving process for Dennis’s family has been extremely hard, and his death has left a massive void,” the family’s lawyer, Rebecca Coad, read from the statement. “A piece of the puzzle is missing and cannot be fixed. Life is taken day by day with the hope that one day they will come to terms with it.”
In a previous statement to Global News, Guay’s family has said he “always saw the good in others,” and was “sweet and kind in nature and had a smile for everyone.”
Guay was a music lover who played the guitar and loved to teach it. He studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music, overcoming obstacles posed by his profound hearing loss.
A psychiatrist testified Monday that Guay had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was stable and in good spirits at his last appointment days before the fire.
In a previous interview with Global News, Fredericks wondered why there the sprinkler system wasn’t functioning at the Winters Hotel the day of the fire.
“The Downtown Eastside is full of a lot of marginalized people from all different walks of life and all different stories, but all of them deserve safe and affordable housing that is up to code,” she said in the weeks after the fire.
Fredericks has said Garlow was a member of the Oneida Nation in the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario and survivor of the Mohawk Institute Residential School who moved to B.C. in her 20s and lived the rest of her life in the Downtown Eastside. In that neighbourhood, Garlow was known as people’s “street mom.”
“She helped a lot of people down there and people are referring to her as a mother-like figure for them,” Fredericks said in the April 2022 interview. “It’s important that we honour Mary Ann’s life and put a face and a name to her.
“(She) was a daughter and a mother and a sister and an auntie and a survivor. She mattered. She deserved better.”
— with files from Simon Little and The Canadian Press
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