EPISODE FIVE – This time, Ivanoh and I spread out our chairs in the parking lot of a small, old-fashioned shopping center between the Metropolitan Autoroute and Saint-Laurent Boulevard, which is half empty.
Next to the Western Union counter you can still read the advertisement for a now closed shop that sells extremely false eyelashes. I have to say that this bothers me. I try as best I can to imagine what extreme false eyelashes might look like. Extreme. An unlikely adjective in the realm of false eyelashes. An examination is necessary, I said to myself, smiling. Apparently I’m keeping my mind busy because no one has come to the Western Union since we arrived.
Listen to Émilie tell you in his words:
The clerk also seems to be waiting a long time inside the money transfer counter. But he refuses to chat with me, to even exchange a few words. This type of company prohibits their employees from speaking to journalists, even when it comes to trivial matters such as the length of time or the temperature. Or even difficult times.
As in almost all areas, companies active in money transfer, such as Western Union, are increasingly coming into competition from the Internet. Over the last two years, the amount of money sent by phone has increased by 48% as digital channels are significantly cheaper than traditional ones.
The absence of customers is also eloquent. And boring.
We are therefore moving our home to Montreal North.
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Conversation in the shade of a tree in this hot summer month.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Ivanoh Demers
I must confess that my ignorance of botany is catastrophic, but I would like to thank the Montréal-Nord district for the beauty of the trees planted in front of the hideous Place Montréal-Nord.
The presence of these bushy trees, which look as if they were transplanted from warm countries, gives our new living room a tropical beauty that brightens this ensemble and would otherwise make any self-respecting urban planner weep. Here we are protected from the hustle and bustle of the city as if by magic.
In contrast to the last counter where we camped, there is an awful lot going on here.
Carlo Timéo fell in love three years ago while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. She is a very beautiful woman, he says, but don’t think that she is a little girl: she is a woman my age!
His Dominican lover is 60 years old. His mother is sick, so I help her, explains Timéo. The Dominican Republic and its paradisiacal beaches are a popular sun destination and have particularly high levels of economic inequality. The poorest 10% receive less than 1% of the wealth, while the richest 10% share 60%.
Love, friendship, blood ties are the main reasons why diasporas send money to their countries of origin, but also people like Timéo, who are not part of it, but on their way meet people who are behind the scenes of the world.
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Confidence under the summer clouds.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Ivanoh Demers
Since I was very young, I have loved learning foreign languages, without any specific goal. Last year I signed up for a Haitian Creole course. What struck me most when studying this language were the proverbs. Haitians are masters of the visual metaphor.
There are proverbs for almost every situation in life. I remembered some of them. Rayi Chen, men pa di l fimen tobacco. This means we can hate the dog, but we can’t say he smokes, which means we can’t accuse someone of things they’re incapable of doing, even if we don’t. “Don’t like.” I also like this: “Kay koule twonpe solèy, men li pa twonpe lapli”, which can be translated as: A leaky roof deceives the sun, but it doesn’t deceive the rain. In other words, a person’s mistakes will be revealed sooner or later.
At the Western Union on Place Montréal-Nord, it is mainly people born in Haiti who enter and leave the small money transfer counter.
Some arrived decades ago, others only recently. Haitian immigration consists of waves that bear the names of political or natural calamities that cause thousands of deaths, ruins, broken lives and exiles.
Malè pa gen klaksòn, misfortune doesn’t honk, it says there.
According to Quebec’s immigration ministry, which keeps statistics on immigrant origins, 3,715 Haitians immigrated to Quebec in 2022.
Haiti is the fourth country with the largest number of immigrants, after France, China and Algeria.
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Badiona Bazin remembers Duvalier Sr. well and the chaos that gripped the country when he was a young boy.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Ivanoh Demers
At the beginning of this radiant afternoon, Badiona Bazin leaves the Western Union with a confident gait. White shirt under a black suit, well tailored. Remarkable elegance. He has just sent money to this country, which he left in 1970. I still have death in my soul because I left, he says.
Badiona Bazin, now 78, came to Quebec as part of the so-called first wave of Haitian immigration, made up mostly of intellectuals and professionals fleeing the regime of François Duvalier.
The dictator, nicknamed “Papa Doc” because he is a doctor by profession, plunders and abuses the resources of the economy for his personal gain and that of his loved ones. He is literally bankrupting his country. Between 1960 and 1970, Haiti’s GDP fell by 40%.
Badiona Bazin was born in the small town of Belladère. He remembers Duvalier Sr. well and the chaos that swept the country when he was a young boy. Anyone who has just sat down in our small tropical living room has a lot to say about life, politics, and Haiti. He is an actor, businessman and writer at the same time. He hosted public affairs shows on CPAM, the radio station of choice for the Haitian diaspora in Montreal.
When he arrived in Quebec, he obtained a university degree and then entered the École des Hautes Études Commerciales. After his release, he was hired as an investigator at Revenu Québec, which he left after 22 years of service because he was lured by political adventures.
When I arrived in Quebec, the Parti Québécois had just been born. I immediately found an affinity for the social democratic ideal of this party. I come from a country where the idea of sovereignty is important and I understood well that Quebec might want its independence.
53 years later. Bazin is still a sovereigntist. And proud of it, even though he lost twice as a PQ candidate in Laurier-Dorion.
Finally, on the small folding chair, we talk about the current situation in Haiti.
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The Haitian tragedy is the brain drain. The best seeds are found abroad.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Ivanoh Demers
Haiti has evil leaders, says Bazin, who points the finger at the economic interests of France, the United States and Canada to explain why so many disasters have struck his homeland. Haiti is the story of freedom, of hope distorted by the corruption and violence of successive regimes. After the fall of the Duvalier clan, Haiti will continue to experience a series of democratic failures to this day, while the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on the night of July 6-7, 2021 marks the complete victory of insecurity and crime in the country.
A lady loitering in our makeshift living room minutes after sending money to her sister insisted on the word stress: Too much stress. Too afraid, she said, to explain her farewell to the Pearl of the Antilles by pointing to these armed gangs who are at this moment kidnapping, killing and extorting ransom from the Haitian population. She fled and left her home. Terror makes you flee. The citizens. investors. All.
“This is the Haitian drama,” summarizes Bazin with a sigh. Because if they could have stayed, if I could have stayed, Badiona Bazin wonders, imagine what I could have done, what they could have done! The Haitian tragedy is the brain drain. The best seeds are found abroad.
Where they thrive, they thrive as best they can and send money to those left behind who no longer have any. A lot of money.
Diaspora remittances to Haiti have increased steadily over the past 30 years, accounting for more than a third of GDP as of 2017. This makes Haiti one of the countries most dependent on remittances from migrants.
“Those we left behind need us, and helping family is part of our culture,” Bazin tells me.
“Men anpil chay pal ou,” says a Haitian proverb. The more hands, the less strain.
In collaboration with Bernard Leduc