en Features November 20, 2002 Nevertheless, three Mondays ago, after jumping out of a friend’s window high on mescaline, three floors to the ground, Roach decided he no longer wanted to be a junkie. “I don’t even remember what happened,” he says. “It made me quit drugs.” He once made a prediction that he wouldn't live to be 27 years old. The odds now seem less daunting. Roach is an animated 23-year-old who still sports his punk garments, despite his new career in filmmaking. He is the director of the controversial documentary film produced by Daniel Cross, Squeegee Punks In Traffic (SPIT), that made waves with its close, hard look at the lives of those making a living wiping the occasional car windshield. “The Roachcam is like captain hook, it’s part of my body,” he says of the Hi-8 camera he used to film SPIT. “As a filmmaker, I’m not looking [at a situation] from the top, I’m living it, I’m getting drunk with my subjects, I go out in the city with them. “I want to show people how the life of punks is,” he says. “We are fighting for a better life.” Roach escaped from a juvenile detention centre at 14 and spent the following six years on the streets of New York, Chicago, Toronto and, finally, Montréal. He has his own views on detention centres, where he landed for “smoking marijuana,” an entity he doesn’t even consider a drug. “I learned how to steal cars, pick- pocket,” he recalls. “You put an inno- cent kid with a bunch of criminals— what do you expect—he turns into a criminal.” “Generally, three quarters of street kids come out of juvenile detention centres, others come from poor fami- lies,” says Roach. He weaves in little anecdotes as he remembers his days on the streets. With a smile, he explains some of the street codes for police watch. “There would be two guys squeegeeing and one guy standing at the corner, near the streetlight. If he saw a cop coming he would call ‘six’ and everyone would disappear. They would go and hide,” he says. “Then when the cops left, you would see squeegees coming out from everywhere.” This seems like a great show of solidarity, but Roach is quick to dispel this: “There’s a lot of street wars.” His statement is justified with an anecdote. He refers to a bearded man, who we crossed on our way to the cafe where our interview took place. “I got into a fight with him a while ago,” he says. “He was saying that it was his street corner. Nobody owns the street. This is Montréal, the street is public.” Public or not, there is a price to pay for sleeping on the streets of Montréal. That price comes in the form of fines distributed by police. “You're always hiding from the cops,” says Roach. At one time, he owed $135 for each of the 82 tickets he had been issued for squeegee- ing. But that is the least of the daily worries street kids face. According to a document produced by Dans La Rue (DLR), an organisation that works with the city’s street kids on many different levels, in the course of any given year in Montréal, near- ly 5,000 kids can be found living on the streets or in high-risk situations. A study released by Montréal public health officials in September, 1998 said that street youth are 12 times more likely to die than their peers. It also stated that 38 percent of the young people interviewed said they had entertained suicidal thoughts in the past year, and around 34 percent had already tried to kill themselves. DLR reinforces that “street kids do not end up homeless of their own volition. Many of them are victims of violence, have led lives of isolation or suffer from serious emotional problems.” DLR offers many different resources to kids living on the streets. Among them is The Van, which travels through the streets of Montréal five nights a week serving hot dogs, dry goods and personal hygiene products, Th Bunker, an emergency shelter, where mor than 2,100 adolescents slept last year, near, ly 8 percent of which were under the age o} 16. As for Roach, he is currently working o another documentary film called L Voyage de L’ Espoir, documenting home lessness across Canada. Things continue t look up for him. “I have my apartment, my computer an my dog,” he lists, not necessarily in th order of preference. For more information on DLR, visi their website at . FuTuresHop [iline« IGT osdsoune Bolleles, = BBs AOL Grwostox WF waLmart Zle* Not all services and features are available in all areas. *For certain phone model and based on a 3-year contract after phone discount or invoice credit on your future TELUS Mobility monthly bill. New activations “Service available on a pay per use basis. ©2002 TELE-MOBILE COMPANY. Want a cool phone’? Try this subtle hint. * Phones from as low as $24.99 Getting the phone you want is all about good communication, Why not just ask for a TELUS Mobility phone with 1X capability? 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