A residential seniors complex in Osborne Village has been without phone lines for eight days, leaving its elderly residents disconnected and the building in disarray.
Villa Cabrini resident Concetta Manfredi, whose daughter died days ago, hasn’t been able to speak with her family in Italy in a week.
“I’m mad every day,” she said Tuesday. “I have no phone, if something bad happens (to me) … I don’t know what will happen.”
Villa Cabrini, a seniors home on River Avenue, has been without phone service for eight days now. Bell MTS is giving the home the runaround, the building manager says.
The 123-unit independent living complex at 433 River Ave. lost access to its Bell MTS-operated phone lines last Monday, but staff didn’t notice until the front desk phone went out and triggered an internal alarm.
Also out of service are pull cords in each suite (which are used to signal medical emergencies), panic buttons and security alarms.
The building has also been forced to enlist resident volunteers to monitor the front entrance, which is accessed via buzzcode connected to the building’s main phone line, to ensure only residents and approved visitors gain access.
Building manager Donna Leeies has been “pulling teeth” trying to get to the root of the issue.
“It’s been a nightmare for a week,” Leeies said. “I thought I would give (Bell MTS) a few days to try and sort it out, but this is getting a little silly now.”
Tenant coordinator Samantha Silvester says she, too, has been getting the runaround.
“I’ve had to reach out to them several times and they have yet to reach out to me,” she said.
About 85 per cent of the building’s 127 tenants are currently without access to a phone, Silvester said. Those with phone lines operated by different companies or those with cellphones have been offering their devices to residents without, but the makeshift solution isn’t sustainable.
A Bell operator told Silvester the outage stemmed from damage to a phone box, while another employee told Leeies the blackout was due to several phone lines in the ground being severed.
Bell MTS did not respond to Free Press questions related to the outage before press time.
It’s not the first time city residents have been affected by landline outages. In May 2022, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered Bell MTS to submit monthly reports after a series of Free Press stories detailed the plight of Winnipeggers who had been without landline telephone service for weeks, and in some cases months, despite customer calls to the company.
In one case, a senior said she was unable to contact Lifeline medical alert services because of the outage. In another, a Winnipeg couple opened their door to see police standing there; their malfunctioning landline had called 911 on its own.
In the monthly reports, Bell MTS said phone issues were a problem long before Bell parent company BCE Inc. purchased the firm.
“MTS’s practices involved very short-term solutions that left the network vulnerable to water penetration in the face of heavy rainfall,” wrote Philippe Gauvin, Bell MTS assistant general counsel.
After six months, Bell MTS was no longer required to provide the reports but the CRTC said it would continue to monitor the situation.
Residents routines at Villa Cabrini continue to be disrupted, Leeies said.
“(Residents) can’t call 911, they can’t get home care, their families can’t call them, they can’t be phoned for their medication,” she said. “We’ve got no phone lines, no fax … Bell MTS doesn’t seem to be making this a priority.”
Instead of waiting for her son’s phone calls, Manfredi now spends her days waiting in the lobby for her son to visit in order to stay in contact with family. She uses a fellow resident’s phone to make quick calls, but she can’t rely on it every day nor make long-distance calls to loved ones, she said.
“It’s taking so long to fix, why? What about all the people living here?” Manfredi said.
Without access to a landline, some residents can’t be reached by Winnipeg Transit Plus to go to appointments and staff have had to use their personal devices to coordinate work and resident-related matters.
Both Leeies and Silvester have contacted Premier Wab Kinew’s office, Coun. Sherri Rollins and the Residential Tenancies Branch.
“We’ve got to figure something out,” Silvester said. “When you’re dealing with older residents and folks who have medical conditions, it’s pretty pertinent to have access to a phone line.”
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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