The Soccer stadium will host its first customers

By 6 p.m. Thursday evening, the Montreal Soccer stadium, located on Papineau Street, will welcome itinerants.The place, temporarily transformed into refuge, can accommodate up to 300 people.

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Outside, the sound of a picker hammer is easily recognizable, while workers are busy mounting a marquee.This should make it possible to test the customers of the temporary refuge.

Serving as a hot zone, the refuge will welcome infected people, who can do their quarantine in a group.

"We received a request from the health network on Friday evening, and today the center is operational.It is incredible, "enthusiastic the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, who sees it as an example of the ingenuity and the capacity for collaboration of the various parties involved.

Inside, the soccer field is unrecognizable.The curtains normally delimiting the sports sets this time serve to separate the different sections of the refuge.In each of them, rows of camp beds are aligned, each being two meters away.

A little further, in another section, a large number of seats are installed in front of a television, constituting the rest area of the place.

"In winter, in very cold weather, we take even more precise gestures.The pandemic once again came to exacerbate the needs for all these people, ”said Chantal Rouleau, Minister responsible for the Metropolis and the Montreal region.

The opening of a refuge in the Soccer stadium was first announced Tuesday by the mayor Valérie Plante, during a press point held following the death of a traveling because of the cold.

With Total, 1,800 places will be available in the various shelters of the metropolis.The stadium will make it possible to relieve and lighten the task of the places already available.