MONTREAL -- New recruits in Quebec’s class of 10,000 new orderlies lined up bright and early this morning for their first class.

They were at the Shadd Health and Business Centre, where they’ll do a three-month paid training program. After that, the government hopes, they’ll be ready to flood long-term care homes in September and help take the strain off the current staff.

Some said they were nervous, having heard harrowing stories of how hard it was to care for patients at the peak infection rate.

But others came armed with experience, including experience in the pandemic.

“I was a nurse before, so this is kind of similar,” said Edith Bouiller. Like many of those whose resumes got snapped up by government recruiters, she volunteered at a local care home at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave.

Bouiller, a Grade 4 teacher at Willingdon Elementary School in NDG, acknowledged it’s “very demanding work.”

Across town, at the French Commission Scolaire de Montreal, a similar scenario played out.

Gabriel Lefebvre, age 65, said he’d applied to the program not for the money but for the patients. 

“My mother-in-law was affected by the disease herself, by COVID-19, so when [Quebec Premier François Legault] made a call for action…you have an opportunity to go there and help,” he said.

Getting accepted was no walk in the park for anyone, however. It was extremely competitive, with the government getting 69,000 resumes within two business days of opening applications.

The effort is now moving at top speed. The training began just two weeks after posting the jobs.

There are some differences between the programs offered by the French school boards and the English one, said those involved. But the goal for both remains the same: to have as many people ready to work in September as possible.

At the Commission Scolaire de Montreal, they’ve taken the outline of a traditional training problem and narrowed it down to the specific needs of long-term care facilities.

The job doesn’t change, said educator Nathalie Pellan of the Commission Scolaire. The focus is simply a little different.

On the English side, “it's a 375-hour course,” explained Michael Cohen of the English Montreal School Board.

“After they’ve completed 125 hours, they go right into CHSLDs as part of their training.” The health authorities will take care of giving the students their specific assignments, he said. 

For current, burned-out health-care staff, “the good news is there's help on the way very soon,” Cohen said.