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15 years later: Deadly Haiti earthquake and those now living in Montreal |
Fifteen years ago a deadly earthquake killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti. While the repercussions are still being felt, the quake itself isn't necessarily to blame.
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Marina Mathieu hums a tune from the movie Mulan as she brews tea at her Montreal apartment.
Then she laughs as she reflects on what was happening in her home country of Haiti 15 years ago. She was in no mood to sing then.
“I was mad,” she recalled. “I was mad at the world for what happened to my country.”
She was one of thousands who fled that country following a magnitude 7 earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010 centered near the capital Port-au-Prince that killed upwards of 300,000 people, displaced more than a million others and destroyed most of the buildings.
Mathieu managed to flee the country 10 days later for Montreal, along with family and thousands of others.
She was 15.
“I’m grateful to be alive,” she told Global News in a recent interview. “I’m grateful to be able to carry on the legacy of my people.”
Though it’s been more than a decade, the filmmaker notes that the tragedy’s effects are still evident. Not just among people in Haiti who includes family members. She sees it among the diaspora.
“The main impact I see today, personally and in my surroundings, is the fragmentation of that population,” she said. “As Haitians, we survive through migration.”
That forced exodus caused by the earthquake, Mathieu notes, was just one of many over generations, caused both by political upheaval and nature. Years of fragmentation, she observes, creates instability.
“How do you keep a culture alive?” she wondered. “How do you keep a legacy alive?”
Community workers in Montreal, like social service worker Sabrina Mahotieres, are also seeing the consequences of the mass migration caused by the 2010 earthquake.
“For many this displacement it meant a lot for them,” she explains. “Yes, they were coming out of a situation that was very traumatic, but they were also leaving behind a stability.”
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Without enough resources to support earthquake survivors when they arrived in Canada, many are still having trouble rebuilding their lives, she observes, leading to poverty and dysfunctional families.
Then, there’s the mental toll.
“A lot of them are still very traumatized and they’re still unable to be in large crowds,” she says.
Others even see a line between international involvement in earthquake relief and the current crisis in the country.
“Because when the earthquake happened the international (community) decided a lot of things without asking the Haitians, ‘what do you want, what do you need?'” said Marjorie Villefranche, director of Maison d’Haïti in Montreal.
She believes that led to flawed aid and political assistance and contributed to Haiti’s current political crisis.
Despite everything, though, Mathieu insists things can change.
“Let’s build something to break this cycle,” she urges. “Let’s get to work.”
She and others want to return home, to make it happen.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
