Furniture donation helps homeless Inuit women get head start

Judy Hayahok, the Inuit case worker at Montreal women’s shelter Chez Doris, located at 1430 Chomedey St. in downtown Montreal, came to the city from Kugluktuk last November. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

MONTREAL — At the Chez Doris women’s day shelter in downtown Montreal, staff do what they can to make Inuit clients feel at home in a city that’s thousands of kilometres away.

But a recent donation of $40,000 worth of furniture from a local hotel has given the phrase “feel at home” a whole new meaning.

One of the city’s Delta Hotels was undergoing renovations. The hotel offered to donate a number of beds, sofas, televisions and desks to the shelter’s clients through Makivvik Corp., which is paying to keep the items in storage.

It’s part of a program at Chez Doris to help cut back on the number of homeless Inuit woman in the city, by helping them rent apartments and get social assistance.

Clients at Chez Doris can choose three items each to furnish their homes or apartments.

“It’s helping,” said Judy Hayahok, the shelter’s Inuit case worker. “We let them know that when they get a place, we can help them get set up.”

Since Hayahok took on the Makivvik-funded position from outgoing case worker Annie Pisuktie last November, she continues to build social and support services for Montreal Inuit women in need.

Inuit women make up about 15 per cent of the clients who frequent Chez Doris.

Since the Inuit assistance program launched at the shelter last spring, the shelter serves up country food every Friday; Hayahok screens weekly Inuit films, provides calling cards and arranges funerals and transport for women who have passed away in Montreal.

Hayahok has also started to conduct outreach in the downtown neighbourhood to check in on regular clients and to find potential new ones.

And a first for the shelter’s Inuit assistance program: Hayahok and another Inuk staff member took a group of women ice-fishing at a camp in the Laurentian region, north of Montreal, this past February.

That was one of the few opportunities the women have had to be out “on the land” since moving to the city.

“It was fun,” Hayahok said, “and it’s something we hope to do again next winter.”

Hayahok, who moved to Montreal from Kugluktuk last November, says she’s still getting to know the city and her clients.

Although she has worked as a case worker at a men’s correctional facility in Nunavut, her clients’ needs are entirely different in a southern urban centre, she said.

Makivvik is currently working to hire another Inuit case worker for Projets Autochtones du Québec, which runs a night shelter in Montreal.

That position would be focused on helping Inuit men in need, who make up roughly half the shelter’s clientele.