More than any natural disaster in global history, it seems, the Haitian earthquake has reverberated strongly throughout Canada, including St. Marys.
Canada’s Haitian community has been referred to as Haiti’s 10th province. But similar descriptions have been applied to the Canadian-based immigrant communities from Sri Lanka, Italy or Pakistan, all of which – in recent years – have endured catastrophic earthquakes.
Certainly, massive Canadian aid-gathering campaigns – often spearheaded by these immigrant communities – have been launched in the wakes of each of these memorable events. For New Orleans and Sri Lanka in particular, there was global hand-wringing on a scale equal to or even greater than what’s currently underway for Haiti: how did the lack of proper planning heighten the severity of the catastrophe, and what can be done during the rebuilding phase to ensure that people are better protected?
But none of these disasters struck so close to home for Canadians.
It’s not just that our Governor-General was born in Haiti, and addressed the nation in the hours after the tragedy, clearly distraught with uncertainty about the fate of her still-in-Haiti extended family. After all, the very notion of a Governor-General is remote to most peoples’ existence; many probably never even noticed she’s from Haiti.
No, there’s more to our connection than just our head of state.
Due partly to proximity but also other factors – such as a century of US occupation, during which a tradition of faith-based aid was allowed to develop – the financially-crippled island nation is a common destination for Canadians hoping to help the less fortunate. St. Marys, with its remarkably active contingent of Hope for Haiti volunteers, may stand out, but it is certainly not unique among Canadian communities. With 11 dead, 1,000 evacuated, 1,500 located and about 850 still unaccounted for as of Monday’s federal government estimates, the tentacles of last week’s earthquake are reaching far beyond the Montreal epicentre of Canada’s Haitian-born diaspora, into the globally-conscious consciences of towns and cities across the country.
Many people with experience in overseas aid know that any poverty-ravaged nation has similar potential to become ingrained into our hearts. Mainly, it boils down to a recognition that exterior economic and social forces have conspired, over generations, against many developing nations, and that the people can’t be blamed for the fact they are in need.
Haiti stands out as a prime example – with its history as the first point of North American contact for Christopher Columbus, followed by a brutally violent path, first as France’s dominant slave-based wealth-generating colony, through its status as a hotspot in Napoleon’s desperate campaign to maintain the French empire, through decades of exploitation under the combined influence of US occupation and domestically-raised despots.
People return from aid trips to Haiti, usually having avoided Port-au-Prince’s notoriously dangerous Cite Soleil slum, to say they’ve been blessed with a true Caribbean experience: meeting and working with people who are grateful for the few things they do have, and warmly welcoming to the Canadians who have come to improve their communities.
They have made friends in Haiti, and in some cases made life-changing connections. The people of Haiti, in many ways, have joined our Canadian communities.
The downfall, even more so than the fact Canadians now are worried about people they’ve actually met and spoken with, is that we must now watch as those same extended-community-members descend into a post-earthquake hell that we once thought unimaginable.
How could mob justice take over? How could anger be directed towards outside nations, who responded as quickly as possible but are being thwarted by the lack of useable infrastructure in the form of airports, harbours, and communications? How could these people, who are essentially like you and me, express such inhumanity?
There’s only partial comfort in the obvious answers: that the quake released into the streets thousands of convicted criminals – afflicted, presumably, by all manner of psychosocial disorder; that traditions of violence and torture have been handed down in Haiti since the slave days; that personal security circumstances for the vulnerable, even prior to the earthquake, were already desperate.
It’s all part of the reality that, due to the pre-existing failure to ensure Haiti progressed in terms of social security, physical infrastructure and economic autonomy, this quake – which, with an epicentre so close to a major population centre, would almost certainly have caused significant damage even in a rich nation – was (and continues to be) a catastrophe of epic proportions. Here in Canada, the anguish at watching the suffering of our neighbours will continue.
Hopefully, however, this provides fuel to maintain – long into the future – a determination to rebuild a Haitian society that’s much better prepared to weather any future storms.