Inside Montreal, journalist Louis-Philippe Messier travels mainly on the run, his office in his backpack, on the lookout for fascinating subjects and people. He speaks to everyone and is interested in all walks of life in this urban chronicle.
She is sometimes nicknamed “M.me Navette”, but some go so far as to call her “Mom” or, out of affection, “Aunt”.
• Read also: Extreme cold in Montreal: no beggars in the Village
Yolette Jean is barely 5 feet tall. Her smile is radiant when she is in a good mood… But her gaze can take on anger if she is disrespected, and intimidate fellows stronger than her.
“My clientele is capable of sudden mood swings,” says the 64-year-old worker.
“For psychiatric reasons or because of drugs, someone who has been nice to me for years can suddenly throw a fit.”
Employed by the Old Brewery Mission, Yolette has been running the shuttle called Solidaribus for seven years, which transports homeless people to shelters.
Photo Louis-Philippe Messier
The shuttle took this woman back to a shelter in Hochelaga from downtown where she had gone to a resource that was already full.
Its surveillance round includes the Atwater, Bonaventure and Berri-UQAM stations.
“I’ll see if there are people who need a bed for the night.”
Mme Navette then takes them where there is room.
“I become the bodyguard if a user is aggressive,” Jean-Pierre Kamgang, the driver, tells me.
With his fur cap, Jean-Pierre is reminiscent of the character of Dick Hallorann driving the snowmobile in the film shining.
Photo Louis-Philippe Messier
The driver of the Solidaribus shuttle, Jean-Pierre Kamgang
Scary
Going down a gloomy concrete staircase from the Bonaventure station, I ask Yolette if she is sometimes scared.
“Of course, sometimes I get scared… There are scary places in the metro!” she replies.
A man surrounded by empty cans snores on a bench. No question of waking him up: “It could upset him, so we’ll come back,” said Yolette.
“I put on several pants and I sit in Square Victoria while waiting, awake, until the reopening of the metro”, says Jean-Bertrand, 52 years old.
“So my nights of sleep always start at 5 a.m..”
Yolette convinces Jean-Bertrand to follow her.
The welcome is warm in the emergency shelter, opened for the extreme cold by the City of Montreal in a former YMCA.
“When people are reluctant to sleep here, you can tell them they can come here just to have dry stockings,” suggests Yolette Luigi Prato, who runs the center.
“Once here, they no longer want to go out and they stay for the night.”
Photo Louis-Philippe Messier
The director of an emergency shelter, Luigi Prato (left) welcomes Jean-Pierre who was about to spend the night outside before Yolette’s visit.
Several of those Yolande spoke to said they had rented a hotel room: “They got their welfare check three days ago, so they are taking advantage of it.”
So if the current extreme cold had taken place on February 13 or 23, it would have been a different story: shelters might have overflowed.