A father and his children regularly cook and deliver nutritious meals to a hundred homeless people in downtown Montreal in order to offer them more than a sandwich on the street corner.
“I wanted to show my children that you have to be careful of others. […] These are really special moments, ”says Hugues Breton.
In the spring of 2020, this executive at the head of a production kitchen at the Center de services scolaire de Montréal, which was shut down due to the pandemic, heard in the media that no water point was available at the city center of the metropolis for people experiencing homelessness.
“I had the idea of distributing bottles of ice water with my two youngest children. We then realized that they were really hungry. [...] We started to distribute snacks, but they asked us if we had sandwiches. It got even bigger,” explains Mr. Breton.
Mr. Breton, accompanied by Layla, 10, and Tristan, 13, therefore began to cook a hundred meals in their kitchen in Laval and then distributed them to Émilie-Gamelin park, one of the central points of the roaming in Montreal.
“With children, it creates a different contact than if I were alone. For example, my daughter has incredible contact with the Aboriginal clientele,” explains Mr. Breton.
For the trained cook, there is no question of sticking to sandwiches. Meal salads, couscous and Mexican rice have featured on the menu over the months.
"Always with meat, because they are carnivores," laughs the 53-year-old.
The initiative of the latter is possible thanks to donations of food and money, not to mention that he sometimes dips into his own pocket.
Their meals offered a few times a month are, unfortunately, increasingly coveted by people experiencing homelessness, but also by social assistance recipients who can no longer make ends meet.
“Last time, we ran out of food,” says Marie-France Kenny, who joined the initiative in February 2021.
Special events
The family, accompanied by several relatives, also offers special meals a few times a year to mark certain holidays.
“At Easter, why not give them chocolate? Why not give them smoked salmon? “, enumerates Ms. Kenny.
The group Faim à l’itinérance notably distributed 80 kg of candy to users of the Bonneau reception center for Halloween and organized a Christmas for campers in July.
“People would tell us memories of their childhood, when they were camping with their parents, or when they were young parents themselves. It really came to get them, ”recalls Hugues Breton.
Meet them
Hugues Breton also took a cart to walk through the streets of downtown, Plateau-Mont-Royal and the Old Port and meet other people who do not necessarily frequent the resources while roaming.
He manages to distribute between 50 and 80 meals per outing.
“I prefer to drive around the city. We are really with people experiencing homelessness,” he says.
