St-Henri reintegration program gives women new start
Antoni Nerestant | for CBC News | Posted: April 29, 2015 4:00 PM | Last Updated: April 29, 2015
Concordia University/CBC series explores stories from Montreal's St-Henri neighbourhood
It's 11:30 a.m. on a Monday morning and chef Melissa Simard's monthly cooking class is in full swing.
Sylvie Godin is chopping broccoli florets for a mixed bean salad at the kitchen table while Natasha Razouk is across the room at the stove frying zucchini for vegetarian Moussaka.
Simard's Moussaka recipe calls for layers of sliced eggplant, tomatoes, garlic and lentils smothered in a sour cream Béchamel and baked until the Greek sheep's milk cheese sprinkled on top turns golden brown.
Next on the to-do list for the handful of women in attendance is rolling out homemade pie dough for the rustic plum tarts.
This isn't your average cooking class. It takes place at CFAD (Continuité famille auprès des détenues), the province's only official reintegration program to help mothers who've had run-ins with the justice system — anything from time in a youth home, to an arrest or incarceration.
Reintegration is a term CFAD director Agnès Billa keeps repeating when talking about government policy and the centre's goals.
CFAD offers the women help looking for jobs and apartments and helps them transition back into the community. Their children come to do homework and to participate with their mothers in centre-run activities like apple picking and skating.
Yolande Trépanier founded the non-profit organization nearly 30 years ago. After Trépanier's death last fall, Billa took over as director.
The women in the cooking class are part of the PACE program, the Programme d'action communautaire pour les enfants. She says programs like these are important because these mothers don't have many places to turn to for help.
The majority of mothers who come out of the Canadian prison system are living below the poverty line. Many are single parents and had their first child before they were 21 years old.
Between 2003 and 2013, the number of women in prison in Quebec increased by 34 per cent.
None of the women at last month's class spent time in prison, but for many of the mothers who come to the centre, maintaining a healthy relationship with their children and creating a stable home is still a large part of their rehabilitation.
Razouk is completing her high school diploma and wants to go on to nursing school.
"My participation here keeps me extremely motivated," she says. "I feel very supported by the staff here. I feel helped and listened to."
Chef Simard has been volunteering with the centre for more than a year but she comes from a fine dining background.
She's worked at some of Montreal's top restaurants, including Graziella and Casa Tapas, but she likes working with organizations like CFAD because of the impact they can have on the people involved.
"I like the organization, so I wanted to help any way I could," she says.
"I figured eight hours a month, it's worth it and they seem really into it. Sometimes we don't have a lot to do and we sit around and talk while things cook in the oven."
She works with whatever Moisson Montreal donates each month, plus a $30 budget for basics like oil, eggs and spices.
This month, it's Moussaka and plum pie, but last month when the Moisson Montreal truck broke down, her menu choices were more limited.
So Godin and a handful of other women sliced potatoes, opened packages of cheese curds and heated cans of peppercorn sauce for a lightened-up poutine with baked fries.
They also boiled giant pots of ham for a bean soup, stuffed wilted Swiss chard into more ham and rolled sausage wieners into pigs in a blanket.
CFAD gets most of its funding from the provincial and federal governments. Billa says they're trying to increase private donations because she's skeptical of how long that funding will last.
A 2007 federal report on the reintegration of offenders indicates that overall, the results of intervention programs within and outside of the prison system are mixed.
But a 2010-2013 Quebec government action plan supports the financial wisdom of social reinsertion over re-incarceration.
Billa says funding is being threatened and tougher legislation on the length of jail time is in the works.
"It used to be that sometimes, depending on the crime you committed and the way you behaved in jail, after one-third of the sentence served you could maybe go back to the community," she said.
"Sometimes you had to do some programs and work. But that's no longer the case. They may now be sentenced to life and basically serve their sentence until they die in jail."
On average, provincial inmates in 2010-2011 cost the government $171 a day. Federal inmates cost nearly twice that — $357 a day, according to 2011 Statistics Canada figures.
More than a cooking class
The classes are about more than learning to make a recipe, says Agathe Melançon. She comes for the socializing and for the food for her family.
"My son does his homework here and we participate in some of the family activities," she says.
She didn't return to work after her son was born, but she volunteers for Le Canal, a free paper in St-Henri that supports social housing issues in the area.
Billa says she sees a difference in the women after they come to the centre.
The class takes organization, but volunteers like Simard and the cooperation of the women who attend make it worthwhile.
She likes the sense of community that the centre creates. And she and her colleagues like the smell of lunch cooking in the kitchen next to her office.
St-Henri Chronicles
St-Henri Chronicles is a collaboration between the Department of Journalism at Concordia University, and CBC Montreal.
Students in a graduate-level multimedia course were asked to find and produce original stories on St-Henri for their final class project.
They spent the winter term developing these stories, and experimented with sound, pictures, video, infographics and maps to tell them.