Homeless people who lived in improvised camps along Notre-Dame Street, in the Hochelaga district, were forced to move when teams from the Ministry of Transport, escorted by numerous police officers, invaded the premises at first light. , Monday, to proceed with the dismantling of the three sites targeted by notices of non-compliance.
Pascal Lefebvre, 55, had been living in a tent for six months, near the water games in Morgan Park. He wasn’t the only one. Most of the homeless people who had found shelter in this area left in the last few days, after receiving an eviction notice.
Pascal waited until the last minute. “I moved my tent last night,” he says, his eyes dark from lack of sleep. He resettled on the other side of the fence, on a site where other tents are tolerated. “It’s unpleasant, but it’s part of life. We have no choice, we make do with it,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, resigned.
Around 6 a.m., teams from the Ministry of Transport and police arrived on the scene and established a security perimeter. Around a hundred demonstrators were also there to demonstrate their support for the evictees, those who were “thrown out,” according to the expression used by activists from the Refus local group.
Pascal Lefebvre was still going back and forth to transport his mattress and personal effects when the trucks arrived to clean the site, around 8 a.m. Booed by the demonstrators who shouted “ Shame ! » (“Shame on you!”), two mechanical excavators entered the site to collect the numerous bins, chairs, stuffed animals, tents, blankets, tarpaulins and other personal effects that the evictees had left on site, including a large mirror and a frame of Marilyn Monroe. Everything was thrown into an orange dump truck.
“We are responding to notices of non-compliance from the borough,” explained a spokesperson for the ministry, Martin Girard, who was on the scene. Asked about the presence of tents on other sites located along Notre-Dame Street, without however being targeted by the dismantling, his colleague Louis-André Bertrand replied that the ministry had “not determined tolerance”, but that he did not intend “to proceed with further dismantling, unless circumstances justify it, in particular following a request from the City of Montreal”.
Résistance
The scenario was repeated a few streets further, at the intersection of rue Notre-Dame and avenue Bourbonnière. At this location, probably the most visible camp in the area, a dozen tents were still pitched, drowned in a sea of tarpaulins, pallets, furniture and objects of all kinds collected over the summer. As trucks began to clean up the scene, Devint Vézina, 40, stood straight in front of his tent, repeating that he did not want to leave.
They are not able to understand that we need help
Two weeks ago, the man told Duty that he would chain himself to his tent if necessary. He didn’t go that far. He resisted for a while, keeping the police officers and the City of Montreal’s Mobile Mediation and Social Intervention Team (EMMIS) in suspense, but he ended up giving up, leaving the scene dragging an old electric scooter, in the grip of a frustration that he was visibly trying to control.
Sitting on the other side of the street, with tears in his eyes and overwhelmed by fate, the man could not understand why the little he had was being taken away from him. This is the fifth time he has been kicked off the street since the beginning of the summer, he said. “They are not capable of understanding that we need help,” he says.
The Refus local collective, which was on site Monday morning, denounced the dismantling operation. “People in camps have no alternative, in a context where shelters are full and where the addition of places through emergency winter measures in warm shelters is clearly insufficient to meet needs,” argued the one of its spokespersons, Guillaume Groleau.
“Dismantling the homes of these people will only increase their distress, attack their physical and psychological integrity, destroy their attempts to stabilize, to unite and to survive together in a context which offers them no viable alternative. »
To watch on video
Related News :