A feminist activist well-regarded in the Haitian community died Saturday night at her Montreal home, believed to be from inhaling smoke from a fire that broke out at a neighbor’s home.
• Also read: Blaze kills 75-year-old woman
“To die like this is a tragedy. It’s terrible. We thought she would die of old age like her mother, not like this,” Maison d’Haïti chief executive Marjorie Villefranche said yesterday of the death of her longtime activist friend Monique Dauphin.
Photo provided by Marjorie Villefranche
Monique Dauphin (left) and Marjorie Villefranche (right) worked together for several years at the Maison d’Haïti to improve the status of women.
On Saturday evening, the 75-year-old lady died in her apartment on Boulevard Gouin Est, at the intersection of Rue Saint-Firmin, in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville district.
smoke
Just before 10pm, Ms Dauphin called her daughter, who lives nearby, to say that a fire appeared to have broken out at one of her neighbours’ premises, Ms Villefranche reported.
“She thought it was in the building next door,” she continued. She said to him: “I hear noises and I see a little smoke”. His daughter replied: “If you see smoke, go away. Hang up and come down immediately, I’m coming. I’ll come downstairs,” said Ms. Villefranche.
Photo agency QMI, Pascal Girard
The flames severely damaged the apartment building on Boulevard Gouin Est in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville neighborhood of Montreal on Saturday evening.
When she arrived at the scene of the fire, Monique Dauphin’s daughter reportedly alerted the Montreal Fire Department’s firefighters that her mother was still inside the burning building.
In it they discovered the unconscious body of the seventy-year-old.
She was then taken to a hospital, where she died the next morning.
“She was already inhaling too much smoke,” said Marjorie Villefranche, who was very fond of the mother of three and grandmother of several grandchildren.
Photo agency QMI, Pascal Girard
“She was a queen mother. She was truly a matriarch who ruled, who led her clan. So the children are very affected,” she said of her former colleague.
great spirituality
The two women worked together at the Maison d’Haïti for more than 10 years.
“And before that, she was a friend. Who didn’t know Monique in the community? We are feminist activists. We worked together for years,” she says.
According to her friend, Monique Dauphin not only campaigned for the status of women in Montreal, but was also very close to First Nations people.
“She had a spirituality that brought her very close to the indigenous people, so she worked with them a lot. She has also campaigned for the empowerment of women in Haiti and for immigrant women here. So she has developed many interesting programs for women,” she said.
“She really is a woman who has given herself a lot in life. Even when she retired, she didn’t stop. She still did a lot of things,” Ms Villefranche concluded.
In addition, the Montreal Police Department said the fire, which broke out in an apartment on the second floor of the apartment building, was not criminal in nature. The exact cause has yet to be determined.
Mrs. Dauphin was the only victim. The thesis currently accepted by the authorities is that she would have died as a result of smoke inhalation.
The Coroner’s Office will attempt to determine the exact cause of death.
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