“He genuinely liked people”: co-workers remember Carl Reinboth

Alayne McGregor

This is a slightly expanded version of the story that appeared in the printed version of the May BUZZ.

Carl Reinboth was a harm reduction worker at the Somerset West Community Health Centre (SWCHC), working with addicts and the most marginalized people in society. SWCHC Executive Director Naini Cloutier said that he was a leader in the field, “instrumental in shaping harm reduction programs across Canada.”

About 9:30 a.m. on April 23, Reinboth headed out from the centre on Eccles Street for a quick break. Ten minutes later, police found him at the intersection of Somerset West and Arthur Streets, with serious stab wounds. He later died in hospital.

His death has left a huge hole in the lives of those who knew him and worked with him. Flowers and other mementos, as well as chalked messages of sympathy on the sidewalk, were soon left at the location where Reinboth was attacked.

Arwen McKechnie is the team leader for the SWCHC’s needle exchange and safer inhalation program (NESI). Reinboth worked on that team; they were also long-time friends. She said Reinboth had worked at the SWCHC for about nine years, and full-time for the last four.

Part of what drew him to this work, she said, was that “he genuinely liked people. It was a rare person that he couldn’t find some kind of point of common interest or shared experience with.

“He was curious about them, and about how they saw the world. He was always up for a chat about the big ideas and how our society functions and how people move within it. And so he brought that open-mindedness and that curiosity about people and how to help them attain whatever goals they might have into his work in a really genuine authentic way that resonated really well with people.”

“Outreach was Carl’s niche,” said Amy Cameron, who worked in harm reduction outreach with Reinboth. “Carl was loyal, genuine and led with his heart. He was a fierce advocate for people who use drugs and those facing marginalization. He worked countless hours of his own time checking in on our many clients, ensuring they were OK and had what they needed. Carl’s ‘job’ was not a job to him. It was a way of life and he did it with much dedication and compassion.”

“Caring for others came natural for Carl – he offered a safe place for those in need of refuge, and gave the best hugs letting you know all would be OK. He was the most committed individual I’ve ever had the privilege of working with and the trust I had in him as a work partner will never be duplicated.”

The 64-year-old Reinboth was a former drug user, who quit in 1992. As he recounted in 2019, “they say do what you know, and I knew playing saxophone wasn’t going to make me any money. … I’m talking to people about drugs every day which is exactly what I did before, so it was a good fit.”

McKechnie said that Reinboth moved from New Zealand to Vancouver as a teenager, and was introduced to drugs in the 1970s counterculture movement. “He was really big into the punk scene, and because he was a person who was adventurous, curious about the world, very open-minded–all of those things would have led naturally to trying drugs, exploring different things and options until he had that knowledge and that experience to draw on. But lots of people who use drugs couldn’t do the work that Carl did, and certainly not in the way that he did it.”

It’s sometimes difficult to avoid cynicism, McKechnie said. “There’s a certain dark humour that’s required to the kind of work that he did just because there are so many structures and systems that seem designed to keep people down.”

However, Reinboth was “never cynical about individuals. He had a great faith in the fact that people were doing their best and, even if they didn’t quite reach where they wanted to in those efforts, that most people were sincerely well-intentioned and wanted to do right by themselves and each other. And that’s a rare quality.”

He was patient with people, while still being firm as necessary. “Carl’s particular gift was working with people who were prickly, people who resented having to access our support and our systems, who understood the injustice that they were not being given the things they needed to thrive and instead had to come ask for help, which to be honest is exactly how I’d feel about it too if I were in a position where I needed to access social service support. Carl was able to feel that – to truly empathize with people in those positions and to hear them and hear their frustration and the competing things that they had on their minds and on their time.

“He would go above and beyond if you needed it. He had a tendency to be very straightforward with people. If he thought that you were being an idiot, then he’d tell you. But he also would do it in a way that came from a place of love and was very clearly intended to be grounding. Sometimes people get caught up in frustrations or annoyances and that’s all fine, but we can’t focus on that right now. We need to talk about this one thing. How do you want to move on this one thing? That I think was helpful to a lot of people in those moments. So it was a balance between patience but also seriously we need to just address this and how can we do that?”

He also had great patience for those who had reached the end of their tether, and “was always willing to try and talk someone down to make sure they had space to talk about whatever was going on with them that had brought them to that crisis point. Carl really excelled at being the person to reconnect with people in a very nonjudgmental and accessible way when they were feeling like that to bring them back into the fold and make sure they were doing OK.”

At home in Hintonburg, Reinboth loved gardening. McKechnie said her favourite memory of him was sitting in his backyard and listening to him tell her about the garden beds he planted and what they were going to yield, and his plans to have a garden at the centre as well.

“Carl was also just a good friend. He would often be the person who, after a tough day, would say, ‘Do you want to go for a drink? For a walk? For a bike ride?’ So I have these moments just picturing him telling some ridiculous story about what had happened that day or a story of his wayward youth which were very wayward. I think he quite enjoyed the shock factor they would bring!”

Both he and McKechnie lived near the centre, and were committed to making the community better. “This isn’t just a place that we worked, this neighbourhood is our home, was his home. So there was a real deep commitment and investment to making sure that our home was as welcoming and supportive and safe a place as it could be for everybody.”

On the day he died, Reinboth had attended the team’s morning huddle and did a wellness check on a client. Then he went out to run an errand, McKechnie said. When he didn’t show up for a planned meeting, she looked for him in his office and then texted him, and then checked if he had got caught up in a conversation. But then two calls came in about the stabbing.

“I had no idea of the scope of this or the seriousness of this, I grabbed one of our nurses – like we need to go! And then we started running up the block. In my mind I had assumed that this was related to our work – not necessarily that someone had targeted Carl as a result of his work, but that he’d seen two people in conflict and tried to step in and intervene because that was the person he was. He was fearless and highly protective of others, and so there were times when as his friend and also as his team leader, I told him you need to stop taking these kinds of risks! Because he would just jump into the middle of things on the understanding that people who knew him and people who cared about him would not cause him harm because they knew he was there to help.”

But when she got to the scene, she realized something very different had happened. She described the stabbing as “a tragedy that had nothing to do with his work or the way that we work.”

Honor Charley, 20, has been charged with second-degree murder in Reinboth’s death, police said. Charley was arrested two hours later, after a second man was stabbed at 11:50 a.m. on Somerset near Bronson. That victim, 84, was taken to hospital with serious injuries; Charley has been charged with aggravated assault and attempted murder in that case.

McKechnie said Reinboth would be missed both as a point of stability and historical resource within the team, and as person who could offer support and make new staff feel welcome. SWCHC Is holding a virtual memorial for staff and Reinboth’s family this month, she said, and may do more later.

“This is a big hole in my life, and I don’t even really know how to conceive of what it’s going to mean, how we’ll carry forward. We have to, but it’s inconceivable that this has happened. He was one of the kindest, nicest, most genuine people I know.”

Cameron said she would never forget Reinboth. “His connection to our community was second to none and our community has suffered a great loss in losing Carl. While he is completely irreplaceable, I choose to remember how he lived and will try to emulate his actions and morals every single day. To say Carl will be missed is a gross understatement, but we will all carry on, in his name.”