Victim of West Quebec flooding founded centre for the homeless
When Louise Lortie Séguin saw a picture of a homeless man and the cherished dog he’d tenderly dressed in a sweater on the front page of a newspaper, she was so touched that she invited them back to her home in Luskville for a fried chicken dinner.
From that chance meeting in 1993, Séguin and her husband, John Jolie, learned of the need for a respite outside the city, so they turned the former Luskville Hotel, where Séguin had previously served drinks, into Maison Luskville alcohol and drug recovery centre.
Two years later, 200 street people had been helped by the centre, including a man known only as Wolf, whose story had been the one that originally touched Séguin.
She was so committed to the cause of the homeless that she spent two weeks on the street in July 1995 to learn about their plight first-hand.
With little more than a backpack, she spent those two weeks sleeping rough and panhandling coins that she used to buy food for the truly homeless, all to understand the people she aimed to help and to earn their respect.
Writing about that initiative, Ottawa Citizen columnist Dave Brown described Séguin as a “peppery, outgoing woman” who called everyone “darlin’” and “believes in the power of hugs.”
Séguin, 72, died early Saturday morning. As she returned to her Quyon home from Shawville, where she had been caring for a friend, her car plunged over the broken edge of washed-out Bronson-Bryant Road and landed on the creek bed. She was later pronounced dead in hospital.
Police from MRC des Collines de l’Outaouais called Séguin a pillar of the community, someone known for helping others.
They treated her death as a tragic accident: Another motorist who had managed to stop just before the metres-deep hole on the unlit road had tried in vain to flag Séguin down to warn her of the danger ahead.