MONTREAL—After years working birthday parties, private functions and public festivals, of making people laugh for profit as Yahou the clown, Guillaume Vermette decided to follow his dream.The 29-year-old from Trois-Rivières, Que., sold his entertainment company two years ago, launched a fundraising campaign, filled a backpack and dove into a new life marked by overwhelming misery, suffering, violence and desperation.Vermette, a full-time humanitarian clown, has never felt so enriched. He has never felt so enraged, either.Now his shows are for street kids in Haiti and Burkina Faso, Syrian refugees in Greece and Jordan, Burmese refugees in Thailand and Russian orphans living in ramshackle conditions.“Yes, it’s rough sometimes,” he admitted in a recent interview. “If you brought me a recipe to save the world I’d drop my clown nose and do it.”But the world ricochets from the ruins of Syria and Iraq, to the Rohingya Muslims fleeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Burma, to the heightened nuclear threat from North Korea. And Vermette’s red plastic nose, powder blue suit, red suspenders and, sometimes, ballerina’s pink tutu are never in the closet for long.In conversation he rants against injustice, exploitation, prejudice and intolerance. He says that what he has seen in the last year or so convinces him that the world is becoming an uglier place. Then he bursts out in an unbridled laugh.“You have to accept that you can’t change the world. You have to accept that the world is a horrible place,” he said. “To embody change is the best thing you can do—and to be positive. But to be honest, it’s getting harder and harder. I thought it would get easier but it’s not.”The first time he put on a costume was about 12 years ago while working as a summer camp counsellor in the Inuit community of Salluit in northern Quebec.He was a 17-year-old white kid wo ...
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