MONTREAL – Martine St-Victor’s goal is to rebrand Haiti.
For decades, the country has had a bad rap as being a deathly poor, environmentally bereft basket case crawling with violent gangs. What people don’t know, and what they’re discovering in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, says the publicist, is that the Caribbean nation is full of resilient, resourceful, hard-working people and a culture rich in music, art and spirit.
“The logo should be, ‘Go. You’ll love it,’ ” the 36-year-old said in an interview Monday.
Frustrated by the slow-moving aid, many young Haitian Montrealers, either born here or in Haiti, have been spurred to action, creating a buzzing grassroots web of devoted hearts wanting to rebuild the country, whether it be through fundraising concerts and fashion shows or frantically collecting tents and tarps to get to the nation before the heavy rains begin.
Their short life paths have differed so far, but the one thing that ties much of the younger generation of Haitians here is that many of their parents left their native land during the brutal three-decade reign of the Duvalier family, sapping the country of much of its brain power and professionals.
And now this young, trilingual, vibrant generation, which has been educated in Canada, feels a strong calling to go back and reshape a country most of them don’t know, apart from the horror stories their parents told them of Duvalier’s security forces, the notorious Tonton Macoutes.
Their days immediately following the Jan. 12 disaster were spent on computers networking by means foreign to their parents’ generation – texting, Facebooking, Skyping, tweeting.
Now that the initial shock has subsided, they’re getting down to business, putting whatever life dreams and ambitions they had before the quake on hold in order to rebuild a country that can finally shake off the negative stereotypes of the past. And at the same time, they are discovering, to their surprise, a love for a country some barely knew.
Sarah Bernard, a Concordia University communications and creative writing graduate who describes herself as a “huge nerd,” has helped set up a website called Union Haiti, a way of coordinating the myriad resources and aid going to Haiti via regular folk, as well as organizing the stacks of progress reports coming out of the country.
Motivated by the false rumours flying around cyberspace after the disaster, she and a couple dozen 20-somethings set up a newsroom and listened to Signale FM all day – the only Haitian radio station that was operating in the immediate aftermath. They fact-checked reports and at first posted everything on Facebook, until they got their own website set up.
“A lot of Haitians are putting their fields of expertise to work in this,” said Bernard, 24, who moved here from Haiti four years ago to study. “The brain drain needs to go back to Haiti.
“It’s kind of like we’re being called back there.”
She’d been in Haiti for the Christmas holidays and hadn’t even unpacked her bags in Montreal yet when the quake hit. Her dreams of applying to do a master’s somewhere in Europe and to travel went out the window.
“I was much younger on Jan. 11,” she said. “And there is so much to do now that I
really don’t have time to mourn.”
Jan. 23 was the first time Sandra Mathieu, 25, set foot in Haiti – a country her parents fled 30 years ago and have refused to discuss since.
She headed down, against her parents’ wishes, with an association of Haitian doctors living abroad. Working as a translator, she soon found herself pitching in to tend to the seriously wounded at the General Hospital in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
“Even the smallest thing you do there is huge for the victims,” she said. “They were so grateful, as if you’ve been sent from heaven.”
While there, dozens of people living on the street asked Mathieu where they could find tents, prompting her to collect the precious and badly needed items upon her return to Montreal.
“It broke my heart to say I didn’t know, especially when Canada has raised so much money,” she said.
After hooking up with a group of concerned Canadians also collecting tents, they’ve set aside the weekend of March 26 to 28 to accept gently used or new tents at several drop-off points around the city.
St-Victor, who was born in Lac St. Jean, and Angelo Cadet, who left Haiti at age 2, have helped organize a fashion show at Ogilvy Wednesday night – the third event they’ve been involved in to raise funds.
It’s the kind of dedication Mathieu, who has quit her computer development job partly because of Haiti, would like to see in every Quebecer, no matter what their background.
“I’d like to see people go there and help,” she said. “People in Haiti are saying, ‘Bring your friends because Haiti needs you.’ ”
Wednesday’s Ogilvy fashion show is at 6:45 p.m. Tickets cost $100 and are tax deductible; for reservations, call 1-877-449-0446 or visit www.wantickets.com/ogilvypourunite
Details about the March 26-28 tent drive can be found at homeinhaitimtl.wordpress.com
The site maintained by Sarah Bernard for UnionHaiti is at www.unionhaiti.org
smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com
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