Heading west yields better returns
32-year-old commutes to West Island for bigger donations and fewer hassles
Panhandling is not a typical activity to see on the roadway soft he West Island and service roads are built for driving, not pedestrian traffic.
But what might seem to be a dead zone for panhandling is actually an ideal spot for one welfare recipient from eastern Montreal, who says a main artery in Pointe-Claire “works much better” than downtown or other busy neighbourhoods of the big city. “There’s also a lot of problems with cops in other places, like downtown or St-Henri,” said Phil, who would not give his full name to avoid trouble from police.
“It’s mostly in poorer areas that they’re (police) are worse,” he said.
By “worse,” Phil explained that police have repeatedly ticketed him with fines of $40 or more for panhandling.
“For a long time I was getting some in the mail, once they had my address,” he said.
To avoid trouble, the 32-year-old often commutes more than 20 kilometres by bus from his apartment in Montreal’s St-Michel neighbourhood to St-Jean Boulevard in Pointe-Claire, where he said he easily collects twice as much as he can in the city.
Compared with the $10 to $15 an hour he could typically pull in Montreal, “here it could be $20 to $30 an hour,” he said.
The commuting panhandler said he typically does one and a half hours of panhandling at a traffic light on St-Jean Blvd. on any given weekday, late in the afternoon. This can earn him the same amount as “three hours somewhere else.”
Advice from friends in the city led him to try the area, he said. Phil typically panhandles by walking among cars stopped at a red light just off the Highway 40 exit at StJean Blvd. with a sign in hand that reads “broke and hungry” and “anything helps.”
Although he panhandles alone, he said he knows of “three or four” other people from eastern Montreal who ask for money in the same area, using similar methods.
Chilly mid-winter weather doesn’t discourage Phil or others from asking for money from drivers awaiting a green light around an interchange near the Fairview Pointe-Claire shopping mall.
“I’m not always here,” Phil said during a short pause from panhandling on a mid-week day at the end of January.
“I could come in the summer, sometimes I’ll come for a few weeks, then I’ll go somewhere else.”
Mental-health issues and recovery from a heroin addiction make it difficult for him to hold a job, Phil said.
He believes he will be able to work once he has completed a methadone program, which aims to wean him from his heroin habit.
“I used it (heroin) for years, and I’ve been on the methadone program for quite a few years also. But it takes time,” he said.
His earnings from panhandling cover food and other expenses for him and his pet dog and cat. Welfare payments cover his rent only, he said.
Originally from the Outaouais region around Gatineau, Phil said he made Montreal his home four years ago.
You could easily mistake Phil for someone 10 years younger, given his youthful appearance, even though he has panhandled “off and on” since the age of 16 in Gatineau due to “medical issues,” he said.
Montreal police enforce traffic laws on roadways throughout the island of Montreal. Although asking for money in itself is not illegal, walking on the road among cars at a busy intersection is.
“Fairly often we see someone asking for money between cars at an intersection,” said Sgt. Laurent Gagnon of the Montreal police. That action violates article 448 of Quebec’s Highway Safety Code, and carries a fine of $15, he said.
Asking for money from a sidewalk by the road, on the other hand, is legal “unless there’s a municipal regulation that prohibits it,” Gagnon said.
Panhandling on roadways is common in the City of Montreal, but “pretty rare” in surrounding suburban municipalities, Gagnon said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s problematic in our area,” agreed Const. Liliane Bellucci of Station 5, which covers the cities of Pointe-Claire and Dorval. Although concerned citizens occasionally call about panhandlers at intersections, patrollers rarely spot them, Bellucci said.
The moment panhandlers see a patrol car, “they’re out, they’re not there anymore. They see us probably before we see them, so they turn a corner and cross the street.”
Montreal police advise drivers not to give cash to panhandlers in roadways because “from what we’ve seen downtown, it’s usually to finance their consumption of alcohol and drugs,” Gagnon said. Police are then left to deal with crime associated with drunkenness and drug-trafficking.
“Down the line, we’re the ones who have to deal with the problems generated by the donations,” Gagnon said.