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The final meeting of Prince George’s Standing Committee on Public Safety for 2024 began with a tribute to the man known affectionately as the mayor of Moccasin Flats.
Earlier this month, Hank Hayden was found dead inside his tent at the encampment.
For more than two years, the former diamond mine first aid attendant helped people going through overdoses and other medical crises and served as a liaison between the unhoused and community leaders.
Hayden was a regular attendee of the committee’s meetings since it formed earlier this year and his friend Alan Huggett talked about his impact on the community at the Tuesday, Dec. 17 meeting.
“Hank responded to overdoses, administering naloxone, doing chest compressions, rescue breathing and calling the ambulance,” Huggett said, his voice wavering.
“He also treated infections, removed bullets, dressed knife wounds, treated frostbite, attended to the drug sick — the people who couldn’t help themselves — and did peer-to peer counselling and helped people find ways out of the encampments if they asked him for help.”
Huggett spoke of a time when Hayden helped a pregnant woman return to her home community, enabling her to deliver a healthy baby. He also said the pair of them helped convince teens at the flats that it wasn’t the place for them, helping them find assistance elsewhere.
Frequently, Huggett said, Hayden felt that the needs and hopes of the homeless in Prince George were not being met adequately and that the city was taking action affecting them without consulting them.
“Hank worried that the city was building shelters to simply meet the demands of the court order and not to truly meet the needs of the people,” Huggett told the committee. “I hope we can prove him wrong."
In 2022, a BC Supreme Court justice ruled against the city’s application to close the encampment and ruled that Moccasin Flats must be allowed to stay open until Prince George can demonstrate that its residents can be accommodated elsewhere.
Following Huggett’s speech, Mayor Simon Yu said Hayden’s impact lives on.
“We as a committee very much still feel his presence in our deliberation of various programs we do,” Yu said.
