I am a senior living at Manoir Cavagnal in Hudson, which faces the back of the Botté restaurant owned by ex-Hudson town councillor Peter Mate. I am and have always been a senior citizen advocate and, now at the age of 66, a senior. Never in my life did I think that I would be put in a situation where I am bullied on a daily basis, and I now know how the seniors who I have helped felt. It is very stressful and intimidating, degrading and frustrating.
Mr. Mate has absolutely no respect for the seniors living in Building D of the Manoir. In the last few years we have gone through demolition of the old Cripps and Clarence building and the rebuilding of the restaurant, with constant and ongoing loud noise due to construction, garbage and recycling trucks, delivery trucks and clients who pull in with loud music and let their cars run with loud music and gas fumes invading our apartments.
Let’s say our lives have taken 180-degree turn from a peaceful and safe living environment at the Manoir to a partying, loud music, screaming kids and drunks, spotlights from the building and car headlights shining into our apartments and much more, even children and adults peeing behind cars facing our rooms. We can no longer sit on our patios and enjoy our coffees and flower gardens. We are locked in our apartments with windows closed and at times with headphones on and we can still hear the music and noise. Even at 10 or 11 p.m., after closing at 9 p.m., there is screaming and loud music from his young employees. They also slam the recycling and garbage bins at all hours, making us jump from the loud impact. The music sometimes starts as early as 9 a.m. while the employees are prepping the tables. Can you imagine waking up to this in the morning and going to sleep to this?
Finally, Mr. Mate has shown his total disdain for us in many ways; he looks down on us as the poor lower-class. How could this restaurant have been approved by our town council knowing that there are aging seniors who are sick and some in the dying phase to endure all this white noise and disrespect?
The seniors who live here are veterans and people from the community who have raised their families here and built this community and now to be treated like this is craziness.
His latest action of quitting to get attention shows us how far he will go to get what he wants without any regard for other people/citizens’ opinion or welfare (“Councillor quits, triggering by-election 3 months after election,” The 1019 Report, March 4). All seniors living in Building D are dreading the coming summer. As he says, he will get his permit, and we, the seniors, will go through another phase of his renovations and construction again.
Chantal Pousseur,
Hudson