Charles Lecomte, president of the Association des Étudiants Antillais (Caribbean Students’ Association) at Université Laval in Quebec City, was anticipating a typical second semester until he turned on CNN Jan. 12.
For the club’s 100 or so members, three quarters of whom are Haitian, winter semester usually brings Black History Month performances and a trip to the cabane à sucre.
However, since the massive earthquake it has meant worry and swift organization as club members await news of their families and raise money to help victims.
“We want to help everyone we can,” Lecomte said.
He has worked in conjunction with student support services on campus to refer students to counselling.
“We have set up a crisis centre here at Laval where people can get help and talk to someone if they need it,” he said. “Another thing, we have been calling everybody [in Haiti] and making sure they are safe. We have a lot of people trying to call families and get news.”
Much of the organizing has fallen to Lecomte, who had no news of his own parents and grandmother until Jan. 16.
“I couldn’t really focus. After the first day I closed the TV,” he said. “I couldn’t watch it, I didn’t want to know, I had things to do . . . for those who had suffered more than I did.”
He said he felt a huge weight had been lifted when he found out his family was OK.
Others have been less lucky. Lecomte said five of the club’s members have lost family in the quake.
“We have one girl who lost her brother, and another lost her aunt. We have a couple of people that lost cousins and relatives,” he said.
The campus has come together quickly. A student group called Haiti Urgence was put together two days after the quake to raise money for the Red Cross, and Lecomte’s group has been organizing its own fundraisers.
“We need help mostly for the Red Cross, because they need to take action right now.”
There are more than 800 Canadians among the tens of thousands missing in Haiti. At least twelve have been confirmed dead, including Georges Anglade, a founding faculty member at Université du Quebec à Montréal.
The Haitian Students’ Club at the University of Ottawa will begin collecting funds for the Red Cross Jan. 22 at the school’s SITE, Roger-Guindon and Lamoreux buildings, as well as at the St. Paul University campus.