Watch above: Members of Montreal’s Haitian community are reacting to the death of former dictator Jean-Claude baby doc Duvalier, who died from a heart attack in Port-au-Prince Saturday, at the age of 63. Billy Shields has more.
MONTREAL – When Pastor Herault Alphonse held his Sunday service at the Haitian Evangelical Alliance of Montreal, he spoke of all the normal themes one would typically hear in a Christian service. The one topic he made sure he steered clear from, however, was the death of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
“No, we didn’t say anything!” he laughed.
Duvalier, he explained, was a divisive figure among Haitians. Alphonse said he left Haiti for Montreal due to difficult conditions under Duvalier’s regime.
“It was difficult for young people back then,” he said. “That’s why I came here, to get a better future.”
Diana Dejean recently graduated from the University of Ottawa with a law degree. She said she intended to do human rights work in Haiti, where she was born. But when it comes to Duvalier, she says her family is divided.
“When I listen to my mom, she said the he killed a lot of people,” she said. “When I listen to my dad, he says, ‘No, he wasn’t that bad. He was trying to help.'”
There are almost 90,000 Haitians living in Canada, the majority of them call Montreal home. Many of them came to Canadian shores during the dictatorship of Baby Doc and his father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who took power in 1957.
Baby Doc took over as “President for Life” when the elder Duvalier died in 1971, but was forced into exile in 1986 in a bizarre exit that involved him being flown to France on a U.S. Air Force jet.
Baby Doc returned to Haiti in 2011, with many in the human rights community hopeful he would stand trial for alleged abuses during his time in power.
Many in Montreal feel that Duvalier cheated justice through death.
“He stole so much, and the country is still paying for it,” said Dejean’s mother Yannick Dejean, who came to Montreal in 1993. “And there will never be justice.”
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