Meanwhile, a man in his 20s with a black tuque pulled low to his eyebrows stomps up and down the meeting room. He punches a balloon taped to the wall. Startled, a dog in the room starts barking.The guy is a regular, says Mr. Teague, the facilitator. “He’s always like that, half drunk.” Tonight the young man is yelling things like “You fuckin’ nigger.”One of the Dudes shuffles over to report him for violating the club’s code. “Did you see that shit?” he asks.Mr. Teague points out that wrestling a man out of the room could damage the club’s open-arms reputation. “We’ve never had to do that, not in five years.” He leaves it up to outreach worker Eric Schweig to talk the guy down.Mr. Schweig volunteers in the neighbourhood in between acting roles, such as that of a corrupt chief on the APTN series Blackstone. Of mixed descent (Inuit, Chippewa, Dene and European), he made his name as Uncas in the 1992 movie version of The Last of the Mohicans. But at 48, wo these men even if they don’t understand all the words.Mr. Charles closes the meeting in English. “Take care of each other,” he says. “It’s cold out there.”Adriana Barton is a Vancouver-based reporter at The Globe and Mail who focuses on health issues.