Pubdate: Sat, 07 Apr 2007 Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON) Copyright: 2007 The Ottawa Citizen Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326 Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/index.html Author: Ron Corbett, Ottawa Citizen WHEN A HOUSE IS NO LONGER A HOME Living above a crack dealer isn't just an inconvenience. It's dangerous. Just ask Vanier's Gerry Patry This is a story about Vanier. There are people who won't like that sentence. Too broad, they'll argue. Too negative. An unfair characterization of Vanier. But I've thought about this for several days, and I believe it's an appropriate way to start this story. What you are about to read is the story of a community that has changed for the worse. A community where children used to play on crazy crooked streets with names like Marier and Deschamps, where everyone knew their neighbours and there was little reason to ever leave this French enclave east of Lowertown. It was a community of innumerable corner stores, neat-as-a-pin homes and old-school taverns, like the Claude on Beechwood Avenue, the sort of working-class watering hole you don't see anymore. (The Claude was torn down years ago and is now a grocery store parking lot. A lot of this story is about bad change.) It is the story of Gerry Patry and his family, who have lived in Vanier most of their lives. Mr. Patry, at 57, lives on a disability, after being diagnosed with osteosclerosis three years ago. His wife, Monique, still works in the kitchen of the Montfort Hospital. This is a story of what happened when Mr. Patry rented a basement apartment to a young man who showed up at his front door. The young man was dressed in a jacket and tie. Had come because of the apartment-for-rent sign Mr. Patry hung in his window, just as he has done for 30 years, whenever a long-term tenant moved out of his basement apartment on Ethel Street. This is a story about what it's like to be a landlord today. The answer, if you will, to all those people who question why landlords don't do more to clean up crack houses and drug dens in Ottawa. The young man looked neat and earnest. Said he was attending school and needed a quiet place to study. He had the first month's rent, $650, and when told he also needed the last month's rent, he went away and came back later in the day with that as well. They signed the lease and the young man gave his name as Gary Smith. He asked if the apartment came with the furniture that was in it, and and Gerry Patry said sure, he could use it. The last tenant left it behind and said he wasn't coming back. You can rent it as a furnished apartment. Mr. Patry handed over the keys and after they were done their business, he left the apartment and walked upstairs. He moved slowly, because of his disease, a bad disease to have for someone like him, who used to work with his hands, outside every day, now his bones so brittle he had to wear braces on his legs and his fingers were starting to twist and contort. There would come a day when he couldn't pick up a hammer. He knew it was coming, but still couldn't believe it. Monique said he would cope, the way he always found a way to cope, but there were days he doubted it. Back home, he sat in a chair in the living room, the one facing Ethel Street, where he could sit and watch the people and cars moving down the street. He preferred this view to most television shows. Used to sit in this chair and watch his two children -- Josee, Sylvain -- play on the street with their friends. He was home most days now, even had an afternoon nap, always sleepy because of the medication the doctors prescribed. Had even fallen asleep in this chair more than once. Was just about to do exactly that when he heard it. It was a door slamming. Loudly. He sat upright in his chair and saw two young men walking across his front yard. At the same time, he heard music coming from the basement apartment. That was loud as well. He sat in his chair for another hour, watching people cut back and forth across his front yard on their way to the basement apartment. For a hardworking student, he sure knew a lot of people. The next seven days were some of the toughest Mr. Patry, a tough man, ever faced. That first night, he went repeatedly to the basement apartment to ask his new tenant (who had used an assumed name when signing the lease) to turn down the music. It never was. There were doors slamming all night as well, with people coming and going until dawn. The next morning, in the small hallway outside the apartment, he found a condom and a needle. He barely slept that week. His wife was worse. "We were scared to be in our own house," remembers Mr. Patry. "People were coming and going all day and night. They would gather on our front yard. When I went downstairs to complain, the tenant would say 'f--k you. This is my apartment'." He called the police. Sure he called the police. They came, told the tenant to turn down the music. They even took a couple of people out of the apartment once, apparently wanted on outstanding warrants. And every time they left, the music would go right back up and the steady stream of visitors would resume. More than once, people lined up on Ethel Street waiting for the police cruiser to leave. "There was no fear and no respect," Mr. Patry remembers of the people who visited the apartment. "They would laugh at me, laugh at the police. They just didn't give a damn what they were doing to us." That became quite obvious on the seventh night. Because it's before the courts, there are details of what happened next that cannot be told. Suffice it to say that on the seventh night, Mr. Patry went down one more time to complain about the noise and the traffic coming from the apartment. This time, he was assaulted. The damage a young man can inflict on a 57-year-old man with osteosclerosis is significant. Mr. Patry had his skull broken in two places, and underwent surgery last month. You can still see the welts and the bruises on his face, more than a month later. His body was bruised as well, apparently from blows to the chest. These have not healed, either. One of the worst bruises is centimetres away from a medical patch that he wears to administer his pain medicine. After the assault, the tenant fled the apartment. While Mr. Patry struggled to get back upstairs, his wife called an ambulance and the police. A young man was picked up that same night, less than a block away, at what police have in the past called a "well known crack house." He was held until a bail appearance three days later and then released. Charged with assault causing bodily harm, mischief and failure to comply with an undertaking is Ryan Killeen, 19. His next court appearance is in May. "He's living just a couple blocks from here," says Mr. Patry, pointing a finger out his front window. "You see him on the street all the time. He saw me once and laughed. " It was Mr. Patry's daughter, Josee Patry-Crete, who first contacted me about what had happened to her father. It was a touching letter, but what I remember best was how she seemed equally sad about what had happened to her childhood neighbourhood. Indeed, she viewed the two events as nearly identical. There had been an assault on her dad. And there had been an earlier assault on her community. She spoke of the way Vanier used to be (she now lives in Orleans) when she was a child growing up on Ethel Street. The way families knew each other, and how it was not uncommon to find four generations living on the same street, no one moving all that far away from home. She remembers the people who used to rent her father's apartments, people who had jobs and who would stay for years -- you'd end up calling them Uncle Joe or something. And these people had good lives, would walk to mass on Sundays, or the Claude on Saturday night, people content with their lives and respectful of other people's lives, people willing to help, even if they had nothing to share. You would never hear of a corner store getting robbed. Or someone getting stabbed on a street corner. Or a landlord getting assaulted. Just never heard of it. "I cry when I see how Vanier has changed," she says. "There must be four crack houses within two blocks of my father. I would never let my children play outside unattended, the way we used to play. There is just too much crime." Now, there are people who will dispute this. Will tell you the assault on Gerry Patry could have happened anywhere in Ottawa. It's unfair to pick on Vanier. And these people are being wilfully blind. Are turning their backs on the crack houses and the petty crime and the assaults on people like Gerry Patry. I would put many city politicians in this group. So, this is a Vanier story. Until someone out there wants to change it. From the latest foibles at City Hall, to an elderly man reading Anne Bronte novels next to the worst crack house in the nation's capital, award-winning journalist Ron Corbett offers a unique vision of our city every Saturday in Life in the City. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek