Despite the pain of this collective tragedy, the L’Isle-Verte tragedy was a decisive moment in the professional career and personal life of a beneficiary attendant at the Résidence du Havre who, at the time, was not only 18 years old.
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Pascale Lavoie, who was a nursing student and who increased her volunteer hours after the sad events, touched Quebecers when met by The newspaper in 2014.
“It’s hard, they’re my little grannies and my little grandpas,” she declared; At the time, it felt like she had just lost several members of her family.
Ten years later, she became care coordinator at the Reine-Antier residence, in Rivière-du-Loup, since it opened in 2016, and works for the former owners of the Résidence du Havre, Roch and Irène Plante.
“I remember the days and weeks that followed, I was with survivors day and night. We went there one day at a time, together, and it did me a lot of good to be in their company,” confides Pascale Lavoie to Newspaper.
Ten years after the sad events, Pascale Lavoie still works with the elderly.
Photo provided by Pascale Lavoie
A vocation
The accomplished 28-year-old woman did not hesitate for a second: this tragedy confirmed to her what she wanted to do in life. She wanted to be close to elderly people and make a difference in their daily lives.
“Over the years, I focused on remembering wonderful moments spent in this residence, which helped me chase away the images of horror and which allowed me to pursue my vocation,” confides- She.
Pascale Lavoie is obviously not the only one who will remain forever marked. Other young adults who were witnesses or front-line responders now realize that the tragedy will have had an impact on their life course on different levels.
After his shift in a factory in Rivière-du-Loup, Guillaume Morin Boucher, then a resident of L’Isle-Verte, was one of the first civilians to arrive at the scene of the tragedy.
Heavy on the shoulders
“I have all the memories in my head. I heard the elderly screaming, the residents were suffering. It broke our hearts even more, because we saw the mother of a guy we knew die before our eyes,” he remembers with emotion.
He notes today that for a 20-year-old, it was a big weight to carry on his shoulders. He voluntarily evacuated all these images from his thoughts for a long time.
“We would have liked to intervene, but the fire was too strong. We were surprised to see how the fire had ravaged the building so quickly,” relates the father of two children.
Firefighter Simon Lavoie with the deputy mayor, Ginette Caron, a few days after the L’Isle-Verte fire.
Archive photo
In meeting with The newspaperthe mayor of L’Isle-Verte, Ginette Caron, also had a thought for all the young firefighters of the time, in particular for her colleague around the municipal council table, Simon Lavoie.
“It was very difficult for these young people, they were traumatized. There, they hugged deceased people they knew. It’s terrible.”