The sad fate of the man whose body was discovered on September 8 among the waste from the Quebec incinerator has become one of the dire symbols of the homelessness crisis. The duty wanted to know more about human beings, beyond this horrible news item.
For Nickolas Lauzon, worker at the Lauberivière refuge, the name of Marcel Saint-Laurent is closely associated with billiards.
Mr. Saint-Laurent was part of the “regular group” at the pool table in the basement of Saint-Roch church, a now closed day center where he started working around 2019.
“The basement of the church was good for people who needed services. But it was also a social place. The group of regulars, “gentlemen of a certain age”, were diligent. Marcel was someone who came mainly for socializing and to relieve boredom. »
He was not a homeless person, emphasizes the speaker. “He had accommodation, he had means, he lacked nothing. »
And he was “proud of himself, well dressed,” recalls the director of Lauberivière, Éric Boulay. “Always with his shirt tucked into his pants, then he had his little cap. »
Did he have a family, loved ones? The speakers ignore it. Mr. Saint-Laurent was a man who spoke little about his personal life.
Before and after the pandemic
He certainly had problems in the past, believes Éric Boulay. He has already participated in a professional reintegration program in Lauberivière. At the Dawn of Employment offers internships to people receiving social assistance in the laundry and housekeeping sectors.
More recently, Mr. Saint-Laurent worked in restaurants, points out Nickolas Lauzon. Despite certain consumption problems, the man was “stable” until a few years ago.
Then came the pandemic, the closure of the church basement… When Marcel reappeared in Lauberivière, he was a different man. “When we saw him again, it was Marcel 2. He was mortgaged, erratic behavior,” says Éric Boulay.
Nickolas had difficulty recognizing him. “In six and a half years of experience here seeing human misery, this was the first time I had seen such radical degradation. Not only physical, but mental. He was half delusional, he wasn’t the same person at all. »
What happened ? Lauberivière’s team believes that he was ill, suffering from a serious illness (cancer, for example), and that he refused to seek treatment.
In the jumble of his disjointed remarks, Nickolas understood that he had lost his apartment, had fallen out with a neighbor.
“Marcel 1” never really came back. Very recently, the police found “Marcel 2” completely disorganized, on the median of a boulevard, a hospital gown on his back.
He often walked around with a bag full of food waste. The last time Nickolas saw him, just a few days ago, he had emptied the contents of the famous bag on the Lauberivière square.
The questions that remain
Nickolas’s voice cracks when we talk to him about the circumstances in which the 61-year-old man was found.
“It affected me to see someone so healthy deteriorate to the point where their body was found in a trash can. It’s terrible, what I’m going to say, but I hope he didn’t have any relatives… Because if I was one of his relatives, it would have broken my heart. »
“It’s all our fault, basically. We escaped. Because we know he had the potential [de se mettre à risque], we saw it. Where did it get stuck? Where was it missing? I do not know. We have no choice but to ask questions. As a society, we are not supposed to find citizens, regardless of their condition, dead in a trash can. We are entitled to a minimum of dignity, and I apologize for that, but there is none in this death. »
Éric Boulay is angry. Just a few months ago, another Lauberivière regular, Gilles Gosselin, was found dead in a park, murdered.
Was Marcel killed, beaten? Or devastated by his health problems and the hardness of his life? A coroner’s inquest has been launched to clarify all this.
In the meantime, Nickolas and the others cling to the sympathetic memory of “Marcel 1”, who, he says, was easily in the “top three” of the best players of his time in the church basement.