Raphaël “Napa” André had been raised outside, in the forest, in the cold. For his mother, an Innu elder from Matimekush-Lac John, that he died of cold in a chemical toilet in downtown Montreal is incomprehensible.
“He lived in the woods, how could he have died like that in the cold? “, she said in Innu-aimun on Wednesday, words translated by her daughter-in-law who accompanied her, Johanne Aster.
The culture shock was total, Wednesday, in the white-walled room of an anonymous administrative building in the shadow of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge where the public inquiry into the death of her son was taking place.
Curled up on herself in her wheelchair, dressed in her ribbon skirt and surrounded by a crowd of well-dressed lawyers, Suzanne Chemaganish expressed her dismay at the terrible end he experienced, at 750 miles south of where he was born.
“In our community, it’s cold out there. When someone comes knocking, we open the door and welcome them, so they don’t get cold,” she said.
Raphaël André, known by the nickname “Napa”, was found lifeless in a chemical toilet in January 2021, a case that shook and moved the population.
While Quebec was in the middle of a pandemic and under the cover of a curfew, the homeless man was kicked out of the shelter where he was around 9 p.m. This had to close due to health measures.
“It’s a big Montreal, how come he hasn’t found a house,” asked his brother, Ghislain André, on Wednesday.
Recalling that she had gone to visit the place where her son had slept in the days preceding his death, the La Porte Ouverte shelter, a place where the beds “had no sheets”, Suzanne Chemaganish expressed the wish that the itinerants “are treated well”.
She spoke of the tent set up not far from the family home, following the death of her son. Upholstered in fir, with a canvas door, like an invitation to take refuge from the strong winds of the taiga.
Suzanne Chemaganish then praised the work of the coroner, Me Stéphanie Gamache, and more broadly the measures taken to help people in need, like her son. “So that they don’t become like the people who wander around everywhere, especially children. So that they have somewhere to stay. »
At the end of the elder’s testimony, as if to break the invisible barrier that separated them, the coroner came down from the raised desk from where she arbitrated the proceedings. Kneeling next to Suzanne Chemaganish, she took her hand.