RECOVERY VILLAGE WOULD SAVE LIVES, CHILDREN, MONEY AND OUR SELF RESPECT

 

When the Montreal Forum closed in 1996, The Montreal Gazette published my Letter to the Editor in which I encouraged the City of Montreal to convert the Forum building into a Recovery Centre for the many street people who waste their lives lying on park benches and in alleys in all kinds of weather - dirty, drunk, smoking, drugged, annoying passersby and throwing away their lives.

 

In my letter, I proposed that the Forum Centre provide basic accommodations including clean cots, showers, simple healthy meals, basic medical and psychological care and triage, counsellors to evaluate the guests, information, guidance and referrals to reasonable housing, health care services, adult education, and retraining programs for jobs.

 

My plan was ignored.

 

So, all these decades later, nothing has changed. The streets of Montreal are still littered with stinking, wasting lives.

 

Again, I propose a Recovery Village.

 

If we can have huge shopping malls full of extravagant clothing and electronic gadgets and killer foods for the well-to-do, why can't we create a centre to save lives, protect tourism, save money, save the police from wasting time, energy and even their lives chasing after drug addicts and violent offenders, protect children from perverts and drug dealers, fill jobs, cut welfare benefits, cut health costs due to violence. There are probably more benefits that would accrue from taking the derelicts off the street, triaging to place each individual in his or her appropriate place, and making people who can be helped productive again.

 

Years ago, when the MacDonalds closed at the corner of Walkley and Cote St. Luc in NDG, the local newspaper, The Monitor, published my Letter to the Editor in which I suggested that the restaurant building be converted to a much-needed community centre. The letter was published but there was silence.

 

Just a few short months later, the mayor of Montreal created a big PR show by turning the MacDonalds into a community centre. As the cameras flashed at him in front of the MacDonalds building, I handed him a copy of my Letter to the Editor which he quickly pocketed.

 

I know what I am talking about. I have been widowed, seriously ill, unemployed, a crime victim, homeless and destitute. Here is a piece I wrote during one of my darkest times:  

  

A NIGHT IN SHELTER THREE

 

By

 

Phyllis Mass Carter
1993

 

 

 

From the Journal of an Incurable Job Hunter

 

Curriculum Vitae

 

Phyllis Mass Carter  - Canadian. Widow
Professional Journalist/Editorialist/ Reporter/Lyricist
Professional Private Investigator
Public Speaker/Coach/Speech writer
Professional Photographer
Executive Assistant
Formerly Comfortable Montreal West Island Suburbanite
Unemployed due to being "Overqualified" and "Anglo"

In Montreal, Quebec -
And due to "The Recession."

 

A NIGHT IN SHELTER THREE - HULL, QUEBEC - SUMMER, 1993

 

Here, after midnight,

Strangers keep coughing in the dark;

I hear syncopated snoring in the dark;

A peculiar girl is laughing in her sleep;

An old man with a shaggy beard weeps.

 

A strapping fellow with solid biceps

And wild eyes

Mills about in his undershirt,

Cursing much and mightily

At no one in particular.

 

A distraught spinster leaps from her cot,

Quoting scripture and raving -

"The Lord will see you all in Hell for this !"

 

And here am I,

In the midst of this congregation

Of derelicts, alcoholics and drug addicts.

I feel separate - out of place - disassociated,

And small,

And scared -

And I keep very still.

 

Wrapped in a blanket,

Afraid to lie down,

I sit curled up tight

In a worn upholstered chair,

Behind rows of discarded chesterfields

That reek of stale tobacco,

And the pungent perspiration

Of the tormented and the dispossessed.

 

(Earlier, I noticed someone had written

"WORMS" on the lunch menu.)

 

My few possessions are in Locker 33 -

Safe -

Perhaps:

But the Keeper keeps the key,

And the Keeper is a stranger

To me.

I keep my eye on 33

Through the smokey blackness.

 

1:15 A.M.

 

I watch the silhouette of

The wild-eyed one with the biceps,

As he paces erratically in the dark,

Growling his angry epithets -

Stringing them out -

Like long lines of dirty laundry.

(I never realized there were so many

Obscene words in the French language.)

 

The acrid odors blend together -

An environmental hazard -

A filthy fog

That envelopes me and invades my senses.

 

I NEED AIR !

 

2:20 A.M.

 

Suddenly someone switches on the T.V.

A sharp blast of Fifes and Drums

Stuns me with Sousa !

 

4:05 A.M.

 

Weary,

I drift into my memory,

Seeking the sweet solace

Of my precious husband's arms.

I won't cry. I will NOT !

 

But closed eyelids can't filter out

The putrid stench of wasting human lives.

 

Where is the dawn  ?

 

30

 

Copyright Phyllis Mass Carter - Ottawa - May, 1993 - All rights reserved by the author.

 

I wrote this piece in May, 1993. I asked, "Where is the dawn?"

 

I could not have foreseen that, on October 7, 1996, widowed and sick with cancer, I would be robbed of everything I worked for all my life by Dawn McSweeney and see my family and my health destroyed with the help of the Montreal Police.

 

I called this piece Shelter Three because it was the third shelter I had stayed in while struggling to find work. This was one year after my darling husband died and just weeks before I fell ill with cancer.

 

PHYLLIS CARTER'S JOURNAL http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.com/2012/01/observations-in-shelter-three_23.html

 

It's a funny thing about truth. It keeps on being true.

What I said in 1996 is still true in 2012.

But who will do the right thing now ?