They wave their green and white flags in front of the CLSC, jumping up and down to keep warm. Even though we passed other demonstrators a few hundred meters ago, these armed with red and white tuques, almost everyone honked their horns. Whoop, whoop, girls.
We have emphasized this almost everywhere, but this is what is striking when we look at these small, valiant and determined groups: the overwhelming majority of women who make them up. They are holding coffee cups, noisemakers and pennants, they have cheap plastic hats and raincoats, no doubt quickly bought at the Dollarama next door when the snow turned to rain. They set up a small tent, brought an old ghetto blaster (not a small Bluetooth speaker, no, no, an old ghetto blaster), opened the box of donuts, and they call out to motorists with big gestures and huge smiles.
A little boy is playing in the snow between their legs, because what do you do when your child is on strike at the end of 2023 and no one is home to take care of him? You take him with you to picket.
Further on at the red light, four or five people, Santa hats tightly screwed on their heads, are collecting donations for the food drive. When we open the window to give the little bearded gentleman a five, he smiles and gestures with his head towards the demonstrators: “Honestly, you would have been just as good to give it to them. »
We had barely parked at the mutual aid center next to the house when a man heading towards his car said to us: “It’s closed. » He says it a little abruptly, but you don’t sense any rudeness or lack of consideration in his tone, he just looks extremely tired. I ask him if we can leave our bags in the back of the center, the trunk is extremely full, we have stuffed animals, pockets of disparate figurines, puzzles, princess costumes, a small army of Barbies, books.
The man leans down to our level and looks at us: “OK, are you coming to donate? » He takes out his set of keys and helps us put the boxes away in a small shed where piles of toys, clothes and food are already piled up. “It will all be gone by Christmas,” he explains to us. We thank him profusely for opening up to us, he smiles and shrugs his shoulders, it’s quite normal.
Getting back into the car, the little girl asks: “Did he think we were coming to get things?” » She doesn’t say it because she doesn’t want to seem dismissive, but I know what she’s thinking: in her head, we don’t “look” poor.
His half-sister, who also understood, explains to him that now, a large part of the clientele of the self-help centers has a job, a car, a roof. The little girl: “But that makes no sense? » We decide to explain to him what actually makes no sense. She listens to us while watching the volunteer get into his car, a real Santa Claus, without a beard and without a costume.
The guy sent by CAA to help me out must have been barely over 20 years old. I watch him get out of his truck, bareheaded in the cold, without a coat, and my first thought goes to my schedule: no chance, it seems to me, that this child will solve my problem within a reasonable time frame. I explain to him that I will probably need a towing, that the battery is dead, he responds, zero annoyed: “I’m going to charge your battery. »
An unmistakable sign that I’m getting older, I remain a little doubtful, as if it were highly improbable that someone so young would know how to do anything. He doesn’t say anything when he opens the hood, but I can see that he notices my look and that it makes him smile. He remains polite, doesn’t point out to me that at more than twice his age, I don’t even know booster a tank, and goes back to get his coat, much to the relief of the aunt in me.
I chat to him a little while he resolves my problem within an absolutely reasonable time frame. He’s a little local guy, he tells me about his girlfriend, the neighborhood, this new job that he loves and for which he is extremely grateful. “There, it doesn’t stop, I’m down to seven days a week. » The aunt is worried, isn’t seven days a week a little too much, at some point? He shrugs his shoulders, takes a puff of vaping. “Whatever it takes, we have no choice if we want to succeed. »
He looks towards the river, which is starting to freeze, and smiles. “It’s beautiful, the same, huh? »