Tribute to an employee | Restart your life on the sidewalk

In every company there is at least one employee who stands out as much for his efficiency as for the support he offers to his colleagues or for the appreciation of customers. The Press asked you to identify this employee in your circle. We present their story to you.

Gino Chiasson has been walking the sidewalks of downtown Montreal for almost 20 years. First as a homeless person and addicted to harder and harder drugs, then with a broom in his hand and today head of the Montreal Downtown cleanliness brigade.

It is almost as old as the brigade itself, created and financed by merchants who could no longer stand the state of disrepair of the city center. “The brigade exists to do what the City does not do,” summarizes Glenn Castanheira, the general director of Montreal Centre-ville.

It was he who proposed the candidacy of Gino Chiasson for this series. Because of his personal history. Also because of his seniority in the organization, a rarity. “There is a lot of turnover, the average employee retention is five years,” specifies the general director.

This is by design, adds Gino, which is the exception to the rule.

This is Gino’s real job. Helping guys find something better than sweeping sidewalks and picking up trash left by passers-by. Pick up people who have fallen and help them get back up.

He has gone through the same path and knows the difficulties well. Consumption, addiction, the Father’s House, the Salvation Army. And the therapies. There have been several, he said. The last one was the right one.

Take your life and a broom in hand

Gino Chiasson believes that knocking on the door of Montreal Downtown in 2005 to pick up a broom and walk the streets was the best thing that happened to him. He took control of his life. He reconnected with his mother who lives in Bathurst, New Brunswick.

It was at work that he even met the woman who became his wife. He passed every day and several times a day in front of the store where she worked on his way to the headquarters of the cleaning brigade located deep in the bowels of a building in the city center. She noticed it, they greeted each other and it clicked. They have lived together with their two children in a house that has belonged to them for eight years now.

Gino Chiasson supervises a team of around thirty people who roam the streets of a quadrilateral located between Atwater Street and Saint-Laurent Boulevard, and from René-Lévesque Boulevard to Sherbrooke Street. Seven days a week, summer and winter, they pick up what passers-by throw on the ground and waste blown away by the wind. By mid-December this year, they had collected enough to fill nine Olympic-sized swimming pools with trash.

The brigade also cleans graffiti, clears snow from business entrances, installs Christmas decorations and waters plants in summer. Gino also doesn’t hesitate to take the broom and walk the sidewalks. “I do everything I can to help,” he sums up.

Helping can take several forms, according to him. It could be accompanying an employee to collect a birth certificate and social assistance number, a prerequisite for starting a new life. Help out another who is waiting for his first paycheck. Or explain the virtues of “long johns” to a newcomer from Senegal who is getting acquainted with Quebec winter.

Always starting again

Contrary to popular belief, downtown Montreal has not become depopulated since the pandemic. The cleanliness brigade is well placed to see the opposite. There are a lot of people who frequent the commercial heart of the city, assures Gino Chiasson. “Especially when the weather is nice,” he adds.

There are a lot of people and always a lot of trash to collect. Day after day, we have to start again. Quite discouraging, no? Not at all, assures the chief brigadier. On the contrary, it is very gratifying. The traders, who are the real bosses of the brigade, are happy.

Working outside, at their own pace, is appreciated by employees.

Those among them who complain that people are really careless and throw everything on the ground are reminded by Gino that it’s just as well. “Without them, we wouldn’t have a job. »

For almost 20 years, Gino Chiasson has seen life experiences that resemble his own. There are some who disappear after receiving their first paycheck. Others who persist, like the one who, at over 70 years old, preferred to continue walking the streets this winter rather than staying at home receiving the unemployment to which he would have been entitled. And above all there are several who have used this springboard to improve their lot.