Village Squad | Their mission: to make Sainte-Catherine Street bloom

Monday morning, in the Village. A few pieces of trash litter the ground, a few cripples of life sleep, leaning on the giant disco balls that decorate Sainte-Catherine Street, while others prepare a dose of drugs and workers go to work.

Amidst this fauna appears a dynamic duo dressed in pink t-shirts: Claude Poirier pulls a trash can in a pink cart and Sasha Baga drives an electric tricycle whose front trunk is filled with water cans.

This is the Village Squad, responsible for cleanliness and horticultural maintenance.

Its special feature? It is made up of a resident of a residence of the Maison du Père, the Maison Wolfe, which is located on the street in the Village, and a supervisor, who also lives in the neighborhood.

As Claude and Sasha are busy, people greet them, ask them for information, congratulate them on the beautiful flowers.

Concrete results

“I don’t see what I do as work. I don’t see the time go by,” says Claude Poirier, who is part of one of the four teams formed by the Village’s Commercial Development Corporation (SDC) in May, at the start of the pedestrianization of Sainte-Catherine Street.

When he’s paired with Sasha Baga, a trans woman who works as a drag queen in the neighbourhood, the 72-year-old likes to joke and tell snippets of his life, from the time he was in charge of maintenance at several bars in the Plateau Mont-Royal.

“It makes me feel good, I can’t stay inside. And what’s more, we see concrete results, we see the flowers that are more and more beautiful,” he says.

“It’s rewarding to help beautify our neighborhood, the merchants are grateful. And it’s great to be paired with people who have a different background, we see them evolve and be proud of what they do,” adds Sasha Baga, who sees this job as a way to give back to the community where she has worked for 15 years.

The idea for the Village Squads came from Gabrielle Rondy, general director of the SDC du Village.

“We could have hired a company to maintain the flowers, with the funds we received for the pedestrianization of Sainte-Catherine Street, but we said to ourselves: why not have people who live in the neighborhood, who have a sense of belonging, contribute? I believe that small projects like this one, which we set up in a week with limited resources, can make a big difference in people’s lives.”

At the Maison du Père, the coordinator of integration and housing maintenance, André Leroux, did not take long to get involved in the project.

“It’s good to get guys out of their routine. They’re men of heart,” he says. “It changes the image they have in the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Average.”

Drug

The Village is known as an area where many poqués, homeless people and drug users hang out. Isn’t it risky to be around these people day after day?

“We know them all and they are aware of what we do,” Claude Poirier replied. “They are grateful and are more respectful. They don’t want to cause trouble once they know us.”

One of the squad’s tasks is to repaint flower boxes when they are targeted by graffiti artists. Since they started doing this, they have noticed a decrease in graffiti.

The squad must be on its guard, however: syringes have already been found in the flower boxes, and even a knife. They also avoid approaching people who may behave unpredictably.

Mr. Poirier hopes, like Gabrielle Rondy, that the project can continue even after Sainte-Catherine Street reopens to cars in mid-October.

As he soon moves into his own place on the Plateau Mont-Royal after seven years at Maison Wolfe, he wants to stay in touch with the Village area, for which he has a special attachment. “Contributing to the neighbourhood is what motivates me,” he says.