In Innu village, ‘if someone knocks at the door, we let them in,’ mother tells inquest

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As a young man, Raphaël André often slept out in the cold with his parents near their Innu village of Matimekush-Lac John, his mother recalled. They hunted, and slept amid the trees in a tent. They knew well how to survive.

How could it be, then, his mother asked Wednesday at a coroner’s inquest into André’s death, that in a huge city like Montreal with so many heated buildings and shelters meant to house the homeless, her son was allowed to freeze to death outside?

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“In the community where I live,” Suzanne Chemaganish said, “when it’s cold outside, if someone knocks at the door, we let them in.”

Chemaganish is 85 years old, frail and in a wheelchair. She speaks neither French nor English, but Innu, the language of her native land, which was taken over by mines and white men in the 1940s when iron was discovered there and the town of Schefferville was created.

Despite her failing health, she asked to be allowed to testify at the inquest into the death of her son, who was found frozen to death on Jan. 17, 2021 in a portable toilet, a few steps away from the Open Door shelter. The shelter had been forced to close its overnight services due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Just a week before, Quebec instituted an 8 p.m. curfew, to protect its citizens and overburdened health system. Outreach workers warned the curfew would result in fatalities among Montreal’s unhoused community.

Chemaganish travelled five hours by plane, accompanied by her son Ghislain André and his ex-wife, Joanne Aster, and showed up at the coroner’s inquest by taxi. She wore the bright red patterned skirt of her Innu community to honour her roots.

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She spoke little about her deceased son. She came, she said, to send the message that other people who live like her son did need to be cared for. And that cities like Montreal have an obligation to build the resources needed.

“What happened to my son should never happen again,” she said. “I want that all homeless people be well treated, and that they be looked after properly.”

On the night he died, André had requested to stay at the Open Door, but was told new regulations meant he wasn’t allowed. Workers there said they tried to organize a shuttle to another shelter, but André was reluctant to go, perhaps because he thought he would have to undergo a COVID-19 test to get in. He was found the next morning, frozen to death.

The coroner’s inquest into his death is in its third week. It has heard from more than 40 witnesses, including organizations that work with the unhoused, police officers, health-care institutions and academics. The inquest wraps up this week.

“We need to have more beds for these people,” Chemaganish said. “You need to improve the shelters so that people can feel the warmth, and don’t feel the need to go outside.”

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She told coroner Stéphanie Gamache she was happy for the work Gamache and her team were doing.

André’s brother, Ghislain, said André was a kind soul, a generous person who was known to always be cooking for others or sharing what he had. Despite his distance from his home village, he kept in close contact with his nephews via social media.

In Chemaganish’s village, a small tent was erected in honour of her son, she said. There’s a stove inside to keep it warm. The cloth door is always open.

Gamache told her that in the wake of André’s death, a warming tent was erected in Cabot Square to give emergency shelter and food to those in need. It served 108,221 people in the 14 months it was open. Afterwards, an emergency shelter with 30 beds was opened in his name.

“It shows to what point Raphaël touched people here,” Gamache said.

Testifying earlier, the director of a longtime Montreal shelter and treatment centre catering to those suffering from substance abuse called for a change to Quebec regulations that bar him from admitting clients who are too drunk or high.

“It’s absurd that we have to refuse people entry because they’re too intoxicated, who then end up staying in a shelter with 150 people, or sleeping under a bridge or next to a bike path,” said Martin Lafortune, director of Maison L’Exode.

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Lafortune’s treatment centre takes in those suffering from substance abuse who need time to sober up and improve their health. Clients are referred by police, social workers or hospitals. Sometimes the centre will take in people who have not eaten for days and need a place to recharge for a few days or weeks. If they’re willing, they can be referred to sobriety programs.

But Quebec regulations stipulate L’Exode cannot admit someone who is too intoxicated — for instance, someone who has had more than 20 drinks in the last 24 hours. They have to be referred to a hospital to get medical attention. But in most cases, those clients refuse and return to the street, or to a shelter that allows clients who are intoxicated.

After 11 years of experience, L’Exode has the expertise to determine whether clients can safely stay, Lafortune said. He wants the levels of acceptability increased. He even studied having his centre decertified so it could accept heavily intoxicated clients, as some Montreal shelters are allowed to do. Quebec’s Health Ministry, which oversees the centre, refused.

“We would like to save more lives, because we have seen that we have saved lives in the past,” Lafortune said.

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

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