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.