Canada's dead in Haitian earthquake

The Canadians confirmed to be among those killed when a major earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Jan. 12, come from various backgrounds, including teaching, writing and policing. Some were in the country hoping to improve the lives of Haitians through UN peacekeeping, economic development, or church-led missionary work. 

RCMP Supt. Doug Coates, based in Gatineau, Que., was acting as police commissioner for the United Nations in Haiti. Searchers discovered Coates's body in the rubble of the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince on the morning of Jan. 16. Searchers also found in the collapsed building the body of the UN mission chief in Haiti, Hédi Annabi of Tunisia. Coates, 52, leaves behind his wife and their three children.

Sgt. Mark Gallagher, 50, an RCMP media relations officer, was based in Halifax and went to Haiti to join a United Nations training force and mentor police trainees. He had only been in Haiti for a few hours when the quake struck. His body was found Jan. 14 in his collapsed Port-au-Prince apartment. Gallagher leaves behind his wife and their two children.

Denis Bellavance, 61, a computer science teacher from Drummondville, Que., was giving a lecture at the Port-au-Prince University when the quake struck. Bellavance was confirmed dead on Jan. 16 by the head of Port-au-Prince University’s computer science department following the collapse of the university.

Montreal native Guillaume Siemienski, a Canadian International Development Agency employee since 1999 on assignment with the United Nations was reported dead on Saturday. Hélène Rivard, a CIDA consultant of more than 20 years was also confirmed dead on Jan. 16.

Nurse Yvonne Martin of Elmira, Ont., was Canada’s first reported fatality. Less than two hours after she landed for medical missionary work in Haiti, Martin was crushed by a collapsing floor in the building she was staying. She was in the country on behalf of the Kitchener, Ont.-based Evangelical Missionary Church. This was her fourth visit to the country.

Martin was with a group consisting of six nurses and one doctor who were planning to provide care to Haitians in remote areas. All of her colleagues survived.

Montreal couple Georges Anglade and Mireille Neptune Anglade, both 65, were killed when the house they were staying in collapsed on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Anglade was able to call his daughter in North Carolina from under the rubble before he died.

Georges was an academic, writer and one of the founders of the Université du Québec a Montréal. He also founded PEN Haiti. He was remembered by John Ralston Saul, president of International PEN, as someone who never gave up the dream of democracy for Haiti. Anglade was also a former Haitian cabinet minister and adviser to Haitian President René Préval.

Mireille was a longtime advocate for women’s rights in Haiti and had worked as a French teacher and a United Nations diplomat. 

Philippe Rouzier, a former teacher at Université Laval, was working for the United Nations as an economist after returning to live in Haiti in the late 1980s, his niece said. He was killed while visiting the Anglades.

Antoine Craan, 78, was one of the first black players to play professional soccer in Quebec and was a well-known sports figure in the province. He came to Montreal in 1955 and had moved back to Haiti 15 years ago.

Craan died when a piece of concrete fell on him after he ran out of his Port-au-Prince office. His stepdaughter, Mihalove Daquin-Craan, 13, and wife, Gertha Daquin-Craan, 38, are still missing in Haiti.

Frederick Jean-Michel, 65, of Laval, Que., was crushed while visiting relatives in Haiti with his wife, Evelyn Guervil, 58, who was unharmed.

Montrealer Dominick Boisrond, 45, a mother of two young children, died when the house she was staying in collapsed.

Communications officer for the United Nations mission in Haiti, Alexandra Duguay, was confirmed dead Tuesday, Jan. 19 by the UN. The 31-year-old from Quebec City had been in Port-au-Prince for a year.

James Coates, 37, a UN information management assistant from Deer Lake, N.L., had been working in Port-au-Prince for two years and had an office on the fifth floor of the UN headquarters building that was destroyed by the earthquake.

Two women from Quebec lived in a stretch of beachside houses called Cité des Canadiens in the seaside town of Grand Goave. Louise Marin and Roseline Plouffe were buried in Haiti.

For decades, snowbirds and workers for Action-Haiti, a Quebec non-governmental organization, had come to Grand Goave in the past to enjoy the sun, and lately to build schools and run literacy programs.

Serge Marcil, 65, had been staying at the Hotel Montana, which was destroyed in the earthquake. Marcil was a federal Liberal MP until 2004 and, prior to that, was briefly a cabinet minister in Quebec provincial politics.