One April evening, Lyn Black, an Anishinaabe outreach worker in Montreal, headed out with her business cards and baggies containing masks, looking for her clients — people living on the streets — to make sure they were up to date on how to stay safe in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Black, who is employed by the Indigenous Support Worker Program, was on the corner of St-Denis and Mont-Royal. That's normally a bustling intersection, but it was quiet in those early days of the lockdown.

In the distance, she spotted someone being loaded into an ambulance. A second person, standing close by, wasn't wearing a mask.

Black approached, handing her card to the person in distress and giving a mask to the second person, with instructions on how to use it.