MONTREAL – Sources today confirmed that a public bathroom in Mount Royal Park has completely run out of soap, toilet paper, functioning faucets, and lightbulbs.
Owen Cunningham, a frequent visitor of the park, wishes that someone had at least put up a sign warning park users of the bathroom’s state. “Let’s just say that I desperately needed to use the bathroom, and I was extremely disappointed when the bathroom was pitch-dark and when I couldn’t wash or even rinse my hands, or wipe”. Cunningham says that those indignities were even more insulting after he was forced to squat over the toilet because the bathroom was also totally lacking in toilet seats. Other park users were similarly frustrated by the bathroom, but were also glad to be approached for comment on it because they could help warn others about the state of the bathroom. “Look, I’ll be able to sleep well at night if I can help even one person make an informed decision about whether they want to use a bathroom with no doors on the stalls”, said Alexis Murray.
For their part, local hooligans François Turcotte and Thomas Juneau found the bathroom inspiring. They have been in the business of vandalizing public bathrooms for years, and had never seen this level of destruction before. They said that this bathroom “had stuff wrong with it that we didn’t think was possible”. They have asked whoever is responsible for the state of the bathroom to please come forward so that they could ask him how he removed all of the ceiling tiles.
Cunningham was eventually able to rinse his hands under the steady stream of water that was leaking from an exposed pipe in the ceiling. He tried to call his city councillor to complain about the bathroom’s state, but was directed to a voicemail box and never heard back. It was only once he returned to place an “Out of order” sign on the door that the government finally took interest in the issue. Within the hour the province had sent someone to replace the sign with one that read “Hors d’usage”.
When pressed on the matter, Montreal mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada promised to address the problem by demolishing any bathroom found to be in an unsatisfactory state. When asked why she wouldn’t simply have any such bathroom repaired, Martinez Ferrada claimed that those powers are in the hands of the province. Outgoing Quebec Premier François Legault has announced that one of his last acts in office will be to crack down on these bathrooms and has proposed a new bill which would impose fines of at least $1 million on any municipality that has an out of order bathroom. The same bill also aims to reign in the budget by completely eliminating all funding for “wasteful and unnecessary” public services, “such as road repairs, garbage collection, and public bathroom maintenance”.
At press time, sources confirmed that all of the bathroom’s toilets were now clogged as well.
