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Lachine neighbours team up to make streets safer for children

As a mother of three, Roxanne Lesage wanted to make children in her area feel safer. When she realized the Block Parent program had slowly disintegrated in Lachine, she took it upon herself to help start it up again.

Founded in the late 1970s, the Block Parent Program is a Canada-wide initiative characterized by its red and white signs. The signs are placed in home windows to signal them as places of refuge. They let children and seniors know that the houses are a safe place to go in case of an emergency or incident.

"Kids walk from school to home, and I'm not sure they're always safe, and I thought it was a good idea to bring Block Parents back to Lachine so that they would have a safe place to go if something ever happened," Lesage said.

With her husband, Benoit Patenaude, and four other community members, Lesage has worked to get the signs back in windows of the tight-knit Ville Saint-Pierre sector of Lachine.

In order to get a sign, residents have to undergo an interview process and background checks to ensure the home is really safe for children. Lesage and other Block Parent committee members also visit the home to check if the environment is safe.

Lesage remembers seeing the signs in her neighborhood when she was a child — and feeling a lot safer because of it.

"I was young when this came out. I think that it's coming back, it's becoming more popular because it's our generation's turn to do it," she said.

Residents should only keep the signs up when they are home and ready to help. When they are away, they are asked to remove the sign so that children know not to go there.

Verity Stevenson/CBC
Verity Stevenson/CBC

"So even if your neighbour has a sign, it's still a good idea to get a sign because sometimes you will be available when your neighbour's not," said Patenaude.

"What we need basically is a safe path from the schools to the homes for every child," added Lesage.

Eventually, she hopes to see four to five signs go up per street, especially near school zones and elderly residences.

Julie Ricard, a resident who lives down the street from the couple, hopes to become the next safe house.

"We live right beside a school and [children] pass in front of our house all the time," said Ricard.

Ricard grew up in the South Shore and was ecstatic to see the same signs from her childhood make a comeback.

"It was very reassuring sometimes when you're walking by yourself and knowing when you see that in a window that you could run to that house and be safe," she recalled.