He is one of thousands of foreign fighters who left the country to help defend the country against Russian invasion. However, Émile-Antoine Roy-Sirois, 31, was not a soldier. He had studied philosophy and was working in customer service at a company in Montreal in the winter of 2022.
A week after [le début de la guerre]He started talking about walking, says his mother, Marie-France Sirois. It touched him, he had tears in his eyes. I could see it coming his way, it was crazy.
She describes her son as a nice person who publicly denounces injustice. He couldn’t bear the images of bombed Ukrainian civilians, especially children.
Marie-France recalls that he was bullied when he was little. He became a big guy, but I think he stayed […] the little boy who wished there were more people to protect him.
Marie-France Sirois and her son Émile-Antoine were very close, as if they were “in symbiosis,” she says.
Photo: Radio Canada
Several family members tried in vain to dissuade him from going to the front. Nothing could convince him, change his mind, fail his mother.
Within weeks, Émile-Antoine quit his job and sublet his downtown apartment. He left for Ukraine on March 27.
I would have liked to have known Émile-Antoine longer
Along the way, the Quebecer saw that he wasn’t the only one making this journey.
I would have liked to have known Émile-Antoine longer, explains James, a young American. We met in Poland. I immediately saw his camouflage backpack and asked him if he was going to Ukraine like me. He said yes and since he had no particular plan he joined our group.
I’m glad he made the choice, he adds. He kept making us laugh.
Émile-Antoine befriended his companions, who all enlisted in the Ukrainian army in May.
Émile and AJ, a young US Army veteran, met in a bar in Kiev.
Photo: Alex Chan Tsz Yuk
One of them, nicknamed AJ, another American, says they were in the eye of the storm over the summer.
Once in June we were in Lysychansk, he says. We were almost surrounded before the Russians took the city.
A few weeks later, on July 18, their unit was near Siversk in the Donestk region when they came under Russian artillery fire.
One of our comrades was hit by shrapnel. Émile-Antoine and others tried to put him on a stretcher and that’s where they were killed, says AJ, who was just meters away.
He and the others withdrew, then returned to collect the bodies of their friends.
Émile-Antoine, Luke and Bryan – two Americans – and Edvard – a Swede – were treated to a ceremony in their honor.
I kept several photos and videos of Émile-Antoine, says AJ. He was my first real friend in Ukraine. He really was a good guy.
It took him two days to call Marie-France and tell her the news.
Do not forget
My son, for a long time I thought I had him, she laments today, still mourning.
“What I find the saddest is that Émile-Antoine still had many beautiful things to live. »
— A quote from Marie-France Roy-Sirois, mother of Émile-Antoine Roy-Sirois
She consoles herself by telling herself that he was happy until the end, that he felt useful and that he had some sense of accomplishment.
I don’t like war, she said, but I think we have to acknowledge the courage of people like my son who say, “We can’t accept this.”
At least three Canadians have lost their lives in Ukraine since February 24, 2022, according to Global Affairs Canada.
Marie-France Sirois was able to count on the support of the Montreal Ukrainian community after the death of her son.
Photo: Radio Canada
Marie-France is also comforted by the support of the Montreal Ukrainian community, which last August organized a mass for her son at the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary of the Bienheureuse Vierge Marie.
At the end of the ceremony, people came to offer me their condolences and ask for forgiveness, she says. It was something unforgettable. I told them, “You don’t need to apologize, you’re already suffering so much.”
Today she and her son are bound to this people forever.