24 Hours for the Unhoused 2024

On November 12, 32 Middle and Senior School students participated in our annual 24 Hours for the Unhoused event. During the event, they prepared 650 sandwiches for local shelters. Thank you Bread and Beyond, Dans la rue, Resilience Montreal, and Stepping Up for engaging our boys on how the community can support the unhoused population of Montreal. The night concluded with the Dans la Rue truck providing hot dogs and hot chocolate as the boys prepared for a night sleeping outdoors in the cold. We are deeply grateful for their remarkable participation.  

 

As part of the workshops and activities on the agenda, David Chapman from Resilience Montreal and Nakuset from the Native Women's Shelter, invited a very charming, loving and sometimes unhoused itinerant, Putulik Qumaq. See here with a video of one of the many days when Putulik showed the world his courage and heroics (Putulik). 

 

Putulik shared some stories and some of the realities of what things are like living on the streets. After listening to Putulik, our boys were taken aback with a flood of emotions and realizations. Putulik spoke of love and hope. He spoke with sincerity, compassion and a great love of his Inuit brothers and sisters. He also spoke of times where he and his brother were assaulted, times when his best friends died of a drug overdose and times of when he could not find a home.

 

Another student wrote "What shocked me is how poor the living conditions for the unhoused really are. I found the night cold, uncomfortable and I barely got 20 minutes sleep. I can’t even begin to imagine how much harder it must be for them. Living in way worse conditions than that night, going through it 24/7 through the four seasons including harder ones like winter. All the while being treated like less than human and being misunderstood by society, it really is not fair."

You can see all photos from this event here.