The small-town opioid crisis hidden in the big-city shadow [Video]

One afternoon in early February, an alarming number of people started dropping on the sidewalks of Belleville, Ont. When the overdoses piled up to 13 in just two hours, police warned residents to stay away from downtown, the way you might cordon off a mass accident scene, so emergency responders could rush in to help.

Belleville hugs the Bay of Quinte, its downtown watched over by a clock tower above City Hall that looks like it’s made of gingerbread. The city of 55,000 is home to a profusion of good manufacturing jobs and hosts a big walleye fishing derby as a Kiwanis fundraiser every spring.

The rash of overdoses – none of which were lethal – shocked outsiders and generated national news coverage because the crisis seemed so incongruous with the setting.

In our minds, there’s a familiar landscape to the opioid epidemic: tent cities extending their lurid tendrils across vacant urban lots and sidewalks; downtown streets abandoned by anyone …