Montreal Gazette

Father Johns ‘reached out when no one else did’

- KATHERINE WILTON

Ashley Smith was a junkie desperate for her next fix when she first met Father Emmett Johns, the kind-hearted priest who befriended thousands of marginaliz­ed youths in Montreal.

Johns looked at the holes in her arms, and sensing the pain in her heart, assured her everything was going to be OK.

The two crossed paths often during the year Smith spent on the streets in 2006. They chatted at the Dans la rue day centre, and Johns would give Smith clean socks, a hot dog and a kind word when his van would pull up outside Christ Church Cathedral on Ste-Catherine St., where she often slept.

“He had a soft spot in his heart for younger people who had nothing

and nobody,” Smith said of Johns, who died on Saturday at 89.

“He reached out when no one else did. He cared and made sure people felt comfortabl­e.”

Smith had abandoned her two young children and hitchhiked to Montreal after her life fell apart about 12 years ago.

After a year on the streets, Smith overdosed and broke several bones in her face in a fall. When she stepped into the van a few nights later, she decided she was done with drugs.

Johns, who was known as Pops to the street kids he helped, pulled her aside and said a few words that changed her life.

“He brought up my children — he said these two kids have a mom who has been missing and they don’t know where she is or who she is,” Smith recalled.

“He said I needed to go back and be a mom. He forced me to look at myself. He was strong and stern, but also kind, gentle and loving.”

After staff at Dans la rue, the humanitari­an organizati­on that Johns founded in 1988, bought her a bus ticket, Smith made the long trip home to Alberta and began rebuilding her life.

Smith, 35, now manages a retail store and is raising her two teenage children.

“If it wasn’t for Pops, I would be dead,” Smith said on Monday, several hours after learning of his death on Facebook.

“I wouldn’t be here, I would have froze to death in Montreal or overdosed. He was an amazing man with a heart of gold.”

For more than 20 years, Johns empowered Montreal’s homeless youth and gave them the tools to get off the street and rebuild their lives.

At Dans la rue, which serves as a high school and a job-training centre, staff and many street kids held a minute’s silence on Monday to mark his death.

Over the years, Pops befriended and guided at-risk teens through the most difficult years of their lives.

Cheryl Rennie was a 13-year-old runaway when she first met Pops on the streets of Montreal.

“We would see him on Atwater and when he would be touring in the van, we would follow him,” she recalled. “The van was a safe haven. Pops was always my angel. Pops believed in me and trusted me.”

She said Johns helped her get off the street by finding her a place in a shelter. “He was the light for so many people,” she said. “He was an angel in life, so no doubt, he’s an angel in heaven right now.”

Rennie volunteere­d on the Dans la rue van as a way of thanking Pops for his help and to support a new generation of street kids.

She ran into him at the downtown YMCA about five years ago and said she was heartbroke­n when he didn’t remember her. “He had Parkinson’s and he wasn’t aware,” she said. “It was very sad.”

Johns left an incredible legacy at Dans la rue and the organizati­on will continue to honour his values, which include respect, empathy and unconditio­nal support, said Cécile Arbaud, the organizati­on’s executive-director.

Marina Boulos-Winton, a former executive-director at Dans la rue, said Johns helped street kids in many ways, including handing out condoms to make sure they practised safe sex.

One time, Johns was emptying his pockets at airport security when he realized there were condoms in his pants. He was wearing his clerical collar at the time and was mortified when the security guard saw the condoms.

“He thought they were going to think he was a sexually active priest,” Boulos-Winton recalled.

Matthew Pearce, the president of the Old Brewery Mission, said Johns inspired people to step up and do more than just pay lip service to youth homelessne­ss. “His message was don’t accept the status quo,” he said.

He said Johns refused to accept that young people be left to flounder by virtue of family circumstan­ces.

“He felt they should be able to count on guidance, care, love and support,” Pearce said.

He said one of Johns’ greatest gifts was to persuade youth who had fallen on hard times that they were still part of society.

“Young people who fall off the path into drugs lose confidence quickly,” he said. “They don’t feel part of society and they don’t feel that they belong. That was one of his greatest gifts, that he told them they belong and deserve respect and guidance.”

When Jen Gagnon found herself on the streets of Montreal as a 15-year-old, she said Pops was accepting and non-judgmental. “He knew the people on the street were smart, empathetic people who were wounded,” said Gagnon, 38, who has a master’s degree in environmen­tal management and lives in California.

Pops and the staff at Dans la rue believed in her, she said, even when she had no belief in her self.

When Gagnon eventually finished high school at 19, Pops paid for a dress and attended her graduation ceremony. “He was older then, and it was far, but he came and sat with my mom,” she recalled.

Gagnon said she knows she was lucky to have known Pops and said the world needs more people like him.

“We need to take care of people who are vulnerable,” she said.

 ?? PHOTOS: CHRISTINNE MUSCHI ?? A moment of silence is held for Father Emmett Johns, also known as Pops, at Dans la rue in Montreal on Monday. A patron signs a memorial book, below, for Johns at the organizati­on.
PHOTOS: CHRISTINNE MUSCHI A moment of silence is held for Father Emmett Johns, also known as Pops, at Dans la rue in Montreal on Monday. A patron signs a memorial book, below, for Johns at the organizati­on.
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada