Chronicles of a Successful Hobo

Mirror “People” – September 2009

Bio: This bubbly Plateau gal spends her days labouring as an administrative assistant at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, but, eager to launch a career in media/communications, and with zero interest in acquiring a university degree in the field, she’s recently signed herself up for the latest MusiquePlus VJ Recherché contest. Now one of 24 hopefuls vying for the celebrated gig, Sylvie has a somewhat awesome angle that could work in her favour: a life story that she claims includes living on the streets of Montreal at the age of 16.

How Sylvie wound up a homeless teenager: Feeling somewhat fucked over by her comfortably middle-class father and stepmother in Beresford, NB, the “straight A student” came here to live in Verdun with her biological mother. But within a few months, her mom, “who was a little unstable at the time,” married “this Muslim man she’d only been going out with for two weeks” and shipped Sylvie off to live in a studio apartment “way out in Ahuntsic.” Agreeing to pay Sylvie’s rent, yet never once doing so, Sylvie was soon evicted, and with neither of her parents seemingly too concerned about her situation (“I called my grandma, everyone, but nobody really cared”), Sylvie says she “did what I had to do.”

What she felt she “had to do”: Quit high school to couch-surf, eat out of dumpsters and do the homeless thing. She says she’s a better person today for the experience.

How she earned money on the street: Panhandling “and doing whatever else I had to do.”

Might giving head to strangers have been one of those things? “I have a motto: you can’t rape the willing, you know? You don’t like it but sometimes you have to sleep with people you don’t want to sleep with, it’s just part of surviving, and whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger—I guess. Everything’s a decision. Shit happens and life goes on. Once I turned 18 and was able to enter L’Arrêt-Source, a house for women in difficulty, I got my shit together, taking some programs, finishing high school, eventually finding a job and an apartment in NDG, all within a year and a half of moving in. Had it not been for this place, I probably would’ve been on the street a lot longer.”

Is there any truth in the popular assertion that a person can earn top dollar via the panhandling profession? “Yeah, for sure. Some days you make good money palming, maybe $100. I’m a cute girl, clean, I’ve got some good breasts, and that helped.”

How she kept those “good breasts” of hers clean and lovely while on the street: “I had a gym membership. It was the best, you could kill time there and shower too. I dunno why all homeless people don’t get gym memberships. It just makes a lot of sense.”

Something she “hates with a passion”: “Weekend squeegees” who panhandle for sport.

Last book read: Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss.

Musical preferences: Socalled, Santigold, Radiohead.

Words of wisdom: “If you’re ever attacked, strip out of all your clothes and throw random projectiles—like pennies—at your attacker. Nobody wants to fight some crazy nude person.”

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