Campaigns focus on homeless, Cavendish
Mayoral candidate vows to study creation of wet shelter to help alcoholics
With the mayoral campaigns in full swing, Valérie Plante and incumbent mayor Denis Coderre ratcheted up the promises.
For the second straight day, Coderre put homelessness at the centre of his campaign. He vowed on Wednesday to study the creation of a wet shelter, where addicts could wean themselves off alcohol under the supervision of health-care professionals.
Street workers in the city have been demanding a wet shelter for years.
Meanwhile, Plante has reversed Projet Montréal’s position on extending Cavendish Blvd., saying the road is needed to manage traffic and access a future development slated for the former Blue Bonnets horse-racing track.
Arthur Taratula disappears most nights; he’ll slip into an alley or under a bridge, lie on a bed made of damp cardboard and quietly fall asleep.
“I look for a secluded area, somewhere where it’s quite safe,” said Taratula, who has been on the streets for roughly 30 years.
“It’s so that I’m not going to be in danger of getting confronted by police. Those are the places I go to.
“I have to be extra careful, it’s not always an easy thing.”
As mayoral candidate Denis Coderre prepared to spend an hour on the streets of Montreal Thursday night, he said it would be a show of support for people like Taratula. It marked the second consecutive day Coderre put homelessness at the centre of his campaign.
He vowed Wednesday to study the creation of a wet shelter, where addicts could wean themselves off alcohol under the supervision of health-care professionals.
Street workers in the city have been demanding a wet shelter for years. Five sources who work with the homeless told the Montreal Gazette they’re frustrated Coderre waited until the electoral campaign to weigh in on the issue.
“Most places, they turn us away if we’ve been drinking,” said Candice, a homeless woman who did not want her real name published.
“But it’s dangerous out there. People get beat, people get robbed, women get assaulted. That’s the world they send us back to when we can’t sleep inside.”
About 3,000 Montrealers sleep outside every night, according to a 2015 study commissioned by Coderre’s administration.
“It’s often thought people end up on the street by choice — well, yes and no,” said David Chapman, who runs The Open Door — a shelter funded by grants from the city and other levels of government.
“Everyone makes choices, but we don’t choose those early formative years where often significant traumas come and lead to a life of addiction. Behind that addiction is always a difficult narrative, and not one that you would want.”
Two street workers told the Montreal Gazette that most shelters are constantly in crisis mode.
“There’s overcrowding, bed bugs, you’re sleeping in a room full of strangers and people waking up screaming,” one worker said.
“For some people, they’d rather take their chances on the streets. The shelters do what they can with the money they get, but it’s not enough.”
Candice came to Montreal from a Cree territory near James Bay.
She was new to the streets and unfamiliar with Montreal’s network of shelters, so she slept under the Jacques Cartier Bridge.
On one of her first nights in the city, a man attacked her.
“He tried to rape me,” Candice said. “So I fought him off, but he beat me. I was scared after that. I started hanging out at Cabot Square at night and sleeping at The Open Door during the day.
“I don’t know what I’d do without the people (at the Open Door). No matter what I do, no matter how bad I f--- up, they still welcome me, they forgive me, they feed me, they give me clothes and women’s products when I need them.”
Candice’s experience is all too common, says Jessica Quijano, who works to keep homeless Indigenous women safe on the streets of Montreal.
“Women get raped, it’s a thing that happens on a regular basis,” said Quijano, the project co-ordinator for Iskweu. “When these people are on the street, they’re vulnerable ... And most shelters aren’t equipped to deal with their problems. Their resources are stretched thin as it is, so many of them are pushed further into the margins.”
Quijano and Chapman say they admire the resilience of people like Candice and Taratula.
“People adapt, they sleep in groups or with a dog for safety, they find a friend’s couch to crash on,” said Chapman. “There is a strength they draw on that’s impossible to ignore. They’re fighting every day, they’re good, smart, decent people who’ve been dealt one bad hand after another.”
For Taratula — who is an alcoholic — a wet shelter would mean a warm, safe place to sleep and gradually give up drinking.
Despite his decades-long struggle to get sober, Taratula is still hopeful better days are ahead.
His body shows signs of the wear that comes with decades of hard living. He has a limp in his left leg, a bandage covers the left side of his forehead and his eyes seem trapped in a permanent squint.
But he also speaks softly in sentences that come out at a slow, thoughtful pace. His gentleness and resolve are immediately apparent in conversation.
“I just hang in there and keep on going,” Taratula said. “It’s rough. Hopefully, I’ll be out of the situation I’m in and get back into the mainstream, get back into living a life that’s much different.”
They’re fighting every day, they’re good, smart, decent people who’ve been dealt one bad hand after another.