“I wasn’t afraid to seek help,” recalls rapper Samian, who took his father in for two years after finding him homeless on the streets of Montreal.
In 2011, when he was 28 and just starting out as a parent himself, Samian put his life on hold. But he didn’t do it to take care of himself or his son, but rather to take care of his father, whom he had just found homeless on the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Denis, about five years after he had last seen him.
“It was like my life crashed. I was already fragile and very exhausted from work,” says the rapper and actor, who hosted his father until his death two years later. “There was frustration and so many strong emotions, because he had not been there for me, and now I had to take care of him. I went looking for the tools to better understand him, and to better understand myself,” explains Samian, whose father, absent for most of his life, struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction.
Although long father-son conversations were rather rare, Samian notes in an interview with The Journalthese two years will have nevertheless taught him a good lesson.
“Despite all his mistakes and clumsiness, my father taught me to forgive,” he says, now 41 and a father of three.
Get fully involved
Among all the causes he supports, homelessness and social exclusion therefore have a special place in Samian’s heart.
While he will act as spokesperson for the 35e edition of La Nuit des sans-abri, on October 18, the artist did not want to limit himself to being just the face of the event. In addition to having refused the fee he was offered for this mandate, the rapper will release a new version of his song The itinerantwhich he dedicated to his late father in 2017. All profits generated by the royalties from this new version, more orchestral and symphonic than the first, will be donated to the organization of La Nuit des sans-abri.
“If I’m going to get involved, I’m going to get involved all the way,” he says enthusiastically. “My song The Itinerant is a beautiful letter to my father, and I wanted it to be useful in a new way.”
Homeless Night is held every year on the third Friday of October in more than fifty municipalities across Quebec. The public is invited to spend the night outside, in a public space, as a show of solidarity with those who are homeless or socially excluded and to demystify the realities associated with this issue, which is increasingly pressing in our province. For more details, visit itinerance.ca/la-nuit-des-sans-abri.
