Robert Lowe always says: “Life is beautiful. »
He told me. His friends confirmed to me that he says that all the time.
However, Robert Lowe is one of those men who could say, like a famous Acadian singer, “My life is shit…”
Mr. Lowe is 71 years old… Well, it’s not clear. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. His papers indicate that he was born in Montreal in 1952, but it is possible that he was born in Barbados, to British parents.
Robert Lowe is the name the state gave him when he was 10 years old. Before, his name was Bobby Lowe Mac Nichols.
Before, until he was 7 years old, he lived in Montreal with a man and a woman he called Daddy And Mommy, but who were not his parents. At 7 years old, little Bobby found Mommy dead. Two days later, he was taken to a pavilion at the Anbar Institute, in Vaudreuil, with other abandoned or orphaned children.
He is “placed”, as they say. He was falsely labeled intellectually disabled, a stigma that would follow him and weigh him down for a good part of his life. Then begins, for Bobby-Robert, the beginning of a long stay in the gulag archipelago of institutionalization.
Later, much later, people like Robert Lowe would be referred to as “Duplessis orphans”, from the name of these children taken into care by the State with the assistance of religious communities.
Often neglected, mistreated and abused, they will leave these institutions uneducated and ill-prepared for life.1. The survivors will be (meagerly) compensated by the State decades later.
Vaudreuil, Laval, Saint-André, Saint-Jérôme, Carillon, Shawbridge: the child that was Robert Lowe is moved from one home to another, with children who are sometimes violent, sometimes deficient, often sick. All abandoned. He becomes an adult in this environment.
—How was it going?
— It was the law of silence. There was violence everywhere. The staff towards the group. The group on itself.
I read the archives of a parliamentary committee2 of 1984 which investigated the services offered to people with mental disorders. We hear from several witnesses, some of whom mention the pavilions of this Anbar Institute, where Bobby-Robert spent 16 years, until 1976.
Excerpt 1: “You know that there are students who, when they left Carillon, Anbar, knew how to play cards but did not know how to do anything else…”
Extract 2: “Anbar also had a specialization in very heavy cases, what we call a bit “vegetable” cases, I don’t like this expression but I can’t find any others, deep or serious cases. bedridden…”
Robert Lowe therefore grew up in this environment, under-stimulated. For the system: he is considered intellectually deficient, which he is not. He’s a seventh year old, as they used to say.
In his twenties, Robert Lowe was granted leave from the institute where he was “under guard” in Saint-André, in the Laurentians. He gradually emerges from the gulag of state institutionalization to integrate into the free world, where he finds another prison: that of prejudice.
We make him do internships and odd jobs. Everywhere, he is the “retarded” one, people laugh at him, they exploit him. He does odd jobs, ending up working in a workshop that makes trophies. His life in society which begins is a series of humiliations.
He is 24 years old, it is 1976.
But Robert meets people, he is eager to make connections. He volunteers at Camp Ozanam, a summer camp for poor children, in Saint-Émile-de-Suffolk, in La Petite-Nation, in Outaouais.
He must be endearing: Robert finds, in the west of the Laurentians, people who listen to him, who see that this guy has potential… Despite his tics (he then nods compulsively), despite this false diagnosis of deficiency, despite his difficulty in expressing himself…
Robert Lowe wrote a booklet, a small book which recounts his life, Come out of the silence. Page 20, he talks about a lady who makes him do small jobs, who listens to him. He wrote this moving sentence: “It was wonderful, Mme Fellen treated me like a human being. »
In 1982, the trophy business closed its doors. In Saint-André, Robert is the village retard. How to find another job, survive, live?
A religious man, Father Réal Pilon, told him: “Go to Montreal, no one knows you there…”
The mother of a nun he knows encourages him with the owners of a restaurant in Cartierville which was once an institution in the north of Montreal, Le Bordelais. Robert was a handyman there for 35 years, on a low salary, until 2007, the year he retired.
In Bordeaux, Robert will earn his living. He will learn life too, for example how to confront those who make fun of him. He had frank discussions with employees who found him strange, and who said so.
One of these interactions will push him to overcome this tic he had of always nodding his head: “Every day,” he writes in his book, “I made efforts to control the movements of my head. After six months, I had succeeded. It was a very big victory for me. I began to find that life was beautiful. »
Outside of his work, Robert Lowe will continue to volunteer. Lots and lots of volunteering.
For example, Robert never stopped volunteering at Camp Ozanam, where Father Pilon took him under his wing.
It was his friend Diane Bélanger who told me, in an interview, that on Friday evenings, Robert finished working at the restaurant and that he then stood on the side of the highway to go to camp, on the go, in Saint -Émile-de-Suffolk: “Imagine, Mr. Lagacé,” said M.me Bélanger, scrambling to empty the trash and make the beds in a camp that welcomes people worse off than him. I am a generous woman, but I would not have had the strength to do that…”
And he never stopped volunteering: Mon Resto Saint-Michel (a community center that promotes food security), Camp Ozanam, La Botte de Foin (an affordable vacation spot for disadvantaged families, in Dunham).
Robert Lowe is also involved in the ATD Quart de monde organization, which fights against poverty. This is where he received me, a little nervous, one recent morning, with the boss of the organization, Daniel Marineau.
At ATD Quart de monde, Mr. Lowe has spoken at popular universities. He traveled, he saw Europe. He tells me about Belgium, France, Germany. He carried out humanitarian cooperation in Bolivia…
Robert Lowe speaks to me in a frank voice, with a hint of shyness.
I take notes, trying not to let it show too much that I’m upset by his story. I’m. This man is a survivor, in every sense of the word.
Last March, Mr. Lowe was invited to the National Assembly to receive the Hommagevoluntaire-Québec prize. The member for Rosemont, Vincent Marissal, stood up3 to the National Assembly to greet him in the stands that day, saying that he was “an inspiration”, him, the old Bobby, abandoned, perhaps born in 1952, and who was not supposed to do anything in life…
For the interview, Robert Lowe brought his 2024 Hommagevoluntaire-Québec trophy. “It is in my library,” he told me, “next to my 2018 Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Seniors,” received in recognition of his work for the poor.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Robert Lowe, with his Homage Volunteering-Québec award
He hands me the trophy, I take it, admire it. I can’t help but think that a few decades ago, Robert Lowe was making trophies for others, just dreaming of putting himself out of his misery.
—How does it feel to receive these tributes, Mr. Lowe?
— It proved to me that I had my place in society, because I had always had doubts.
1. Read the text “20 years ago, Quebec compensated the Duplessis orphans: “The past can never be remade””
2. Consult the log of the debates of August 9, 1985
3. Watch the tribute to Robert Lowe at the National Assembly