He was minding his own business, settling into his new life as what he jokingly calls a “coffin dodger.” Then those darned kids had to come along, throwing it all into chaos. Lou Brassard’s plan for a quiet retirement, living on Vancouver Island in the summer months and come winter, lazing about in Mazatlan, Mexico, took a very different direction nine years ago, when a group of ragtag ruffians stole his heart.
When he recalls the day that the kids from the Salvation Army Hogar de Ninos (children’s home) orphanage showed up at the trailer park where he and wife Lorraine had parked their RV for the winter, Lou’s eyes glisten and he grins from ear to ear.
“I was just so impressed with their talent, their beautiful smiles,” says the 68-year-old retired chief petty officer of that fateful day he first saw the children sing and perform traditional dances in colourful costumes. “I knew right then I just wanted to be a part of it, to offer whatever help I could.”
Nearly a decade later, the North Battleford, Sask., native and his equally passionate spouse of 47 years have more than delivered on that early promise.
The couple have worked for several years with the dance troupe, helping them with making costumes and transporting them to venues around Mazatlan’s tourist area, the Golden Zone, in the busy pre-Christmas season. “The kids raise enough money from those shows to keep the orphanage running through to the following August,” says Lou.
Last year, he organized a performance tour for the kids to Seattle, a trip that normally would be a pipe dream for these children born into extreme poverty and conflicted families.
A couple of years ago, Lou also started a dental fund for the kids, collecting funds, keeping up-to-date accounting books and ferrying the children to and from their dental appointments.
But Lou — whose services are entirely on a volunteer basis — doesn’t think he and his wife are doing anything special.
“Heck, they do way more for me than I do for them,” says the man known around town for his ever-present white captain’s hat. “These kids keep me young ….
I can’t think of a better form of therapy for an old geezer.”
To prove his claim of the addictive powers of his young charges, Lou, with Lorraine riding shotgun in their minivan, gives his Calgary visitors a tour of his Mazatlan life on a recent day.
First stop, their small two-bedroom concrete house in one of the city’s colonias, or neighbourhoods. “We’re the gringos of the ‘hood,” he says of his predominantly Mexican environment.
“We moved here because we wanted to be surrounded by people who care about us,” adds Lorraine.
On the ride out to the children’s home situated on the city’s northern outskirts, he explains how the Mexican idea of an orphanage differs from North American definitions.
“Most of these kids aren’t orphans in the strict sense,” he says of the 15 children currently living at Hogar de Ninos. (The home takes in an average of 32 children a year.)
“For most of them, their parents are still in their lives, but they come and they go. Some are in prison for a few years, some leave them here for a while because they can’t feed them.”
It’s not surprising then, that in a country where half of the population lives in poverty, where the minimum wage is about $5 a day, where millions of children work to help their families and where welfare and child welfare programs are virtually nonexistent, the plentiful orphanages dotting Mexico’s landscape serve as a sort of halfway house for the 43 per cent of the population under the age of 18.
“I used to feel sorry for these kids,” says Lou as he navigates the bumpy dirt road leading to The Salvation Army orphanage. “But now I’m more worried about them when they leave. At least I know when they’re here, they’re being fed and loved.”
As the familiar green minivan pulls up to the ramshackle collection of concrete structures housing the children and the orphanage’s kitchen and offices, a gang of robustly healthy-looking children race to greet the Canadians who have adopted them as their own.
“We always thought when we retired, life would be slower and quieter,” says a laughing Lorraine, who worked for 19 years as a receptionist at the Victoria Times Colonist newspaper, as the kids nearly smother her with hugs. “We never expected this.”
While the children put on an entertaining dance show, Lou talks about the challenges of keeping the troupe — and the orphanage — going for the past decade.
“Non-profit groups don’t get tax concessions in this country,” he says. “Just staying alive is a daily struggle.”
Despite such obstacles, Hogar de Ninos does an admirable job of caring for its live-in charges, along with regularly providing meals for up to 60 children in El Venadillo, the nearby poverty-stricken barrio where the orphange kids go for schooling, and which also provides Lou with a steady stream of kids willing to join the 15- to 2o-member, ever-changing troupe.
“You lose some kids when their parents come for them, you lose others when they grow up,” says Lorraine.
After the kids wind up their impressively professional dance show and head to the dormitory bathrooms to clean off the thick performance makeup, Major Israel Garcia Cruz of the Salvation Army talks about the impact Lou and Lorraine have had on their lives here.
“There is nothing Lou and Lorraine haven’t done for us,” he says in Spanish as Alberto Gonzalez Portugal, who lives and works at the orphanage, translates for him.
“He built our big performance palapa (a sort of tiki hut), he got us a sound system, he brings other Canadians here who help with time and money,” says Garcia Cruz. “He’s a grandfather to these kids. I think God sent Lou here to help us.”
Jerry Johnson, a Vancouverite who says he got “roped in” by Lou to help around the orphanage five years ago, stops by to watch the kids’ performance.
“Lou is the spark plug that keeps this engine running,” says the 77-year-old former school district director, who recently set up an education fund for the orphanage in honour of his late wife, Terry. “He pulls people into this place to help out, and we end up getting hooked, too.”
On the way home, Lou takes a detour through EI Venadillo to show the difficult conditions in which many of his young friends live. The van can barely get 100 metres into the neighbourhood before a stampede of children heads right in our direction.
“Lou! Lou!” they yell out as they hug him and Lorraine. At his prompting, this collection of dirty-faced children in raggedy clothes and no shoes breaks into beautiful song.
“This sure beats sitting around the trailer park playing cards.” says the burly man with the big heart. “I’m not ready to sit in a rocking chair and wait to die just yet.”
by Valerie Fortney
Reprinted with permission from the Calgary Herald