They crossed 14 countries on foot, by boat, by bus, by plane. Around 4 a.m. on February 24, exhausted and on the verge of tears, they almost thought they were reaching the end of their journey: a taxi driver from Plattsburgh, New York, dropped them off at Roxham Road. It was a month before the closure of this entry point to Canada.
The next day, Nancy and Feniel Revencharles, a 33-year-old Haitian couple, were convinced they would board a bus bound for Montreal. Instead, they were surprised to be driven to Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Like an indeterminate number of asylum seekers taken against their will to the neighboring province, they quickly returned in the opposite direction. The couple took a bus to Montreal, where they had dreamed of settling down for years. “We don’t speak English. It was difficult in Ontario,” says Nancy Revencharles in the living room of the La Traverse residential center in Montreal North.
Thin, with drawn features, she and her husband recount their adventures of the last seven years to flee the misery and violence of Port-au-Prince. They are relieved to finally find themselves in Montreal, but they wonder why they had to make a detour via Ontario.
When they arrived in the country, they were unaware that the Legault government had insisted with Ottawa that the asylum seekers on Roxham Road be transferred to Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. What was done. Then came the agreement with the United States, on March 25, which led to the closure of this irregular crossing point between the United States and Canada.
Nancy and Feniel Revencharles stayed about a week in Niagara Falls. According to them, the majority of Haitians held like them in a hotel during immigration procedures were talking about moving to Montreal. “Everyone wanted to leave Niagara Falls,” says Nancy Revencharles.
There was no service in French for asylum seekers in their Ontario hotel, according to the couple. Haitians were struggling to communicate with federal officials using Google Translate. It was far from ideal for completing paperwork for asylum, social assistance, work permits and finding accommodation.
Return to Montreal
The couple quickly concluded that it was better to give up the hotel and the free meals in Niagara Falls to return to Montreal on their own. They had enough savings left to pay for a taxi to the bus station, then two tickets to Quebec’s metropolis.
After a short stay with a Haitian family in Montreal, Nancy and Feniel Revencharles went to the La Traverse shelter in Montreal North, where they have been living for almost a month.
“There are a lot of asylum seekers sent to Niagara Falls trying to come to Montreal. It was not their decision to go to Ontario,” says Kicha Nesline Estimé, founder of La Traverse. It accommodates about thirty people in a former presbytery without any government assistance.
Another family, Colombian this time, also explains that they underwent this transfer to Ontario without informed consent. Walington Mosquera Hernandez waited impatiently and with “some trepidation” for her daughter Dennis Melissa Mosquera in Sherbrooke.
The latter, as reported in The duty, crossed the border at Roxham Road on Saturday March 25, hours after new restrictions came into effect. She applied for asylum on the spot, along with her two-year-old baby and her husband. They were still eligible thanks to the exceptions to the application of the Safe Third Country Agreement, which include people who have at least one immediate family member in Canada. After the usual checks by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), she was transferred to Ontario. “At no time, according to his memories, was he offered to stay in Quebec, where his family is,” assures his father, Walington. The family paid for his return to Quebec.
Frantz André, of the Action Committee for Non-Status People, also indicates that a large number of migrants contact him in the hope of leaving Niagara Falls to settle in Montreal. These people must move on their own. Mr. André says he does not know the number of asylum seekers sent to Ontario who have come to Montreal.
The duty reported last February that approximately 10% of the 5,300 asylum seekers moved to Niagara Falls are French-speaking. A pastor who lends a hand with the translation into French had testified to the interest among these people to come to Montreal, where the largest community of Haitian origin in the country is located.
An exhausting journey
Once settled in Montreal, Feniel and Nancy Revencharles plan to study and quickly find work — he as a plumber, she as a nurse. “We are happy here, but sad for our loved ones who remained in Haiti. Insecurity, violence and the economic crisis are terrible,” Feniel whispers shyly.
The couple come a long way. The man left Port-au-Prince in 2016 to go to Brazil. The woman went to Chile the following year, then joined her husband in Brazil, where they worked for five years in a slaughterhouse. A hellish job, badly paid, which offered them no hope of a better life.
In the fall of 2022, they hit the road with their backpacks in the direction of Montreal, thousands of kilometers to the north. The trip, funded by their savings and extended family members, cost them more than $8,000. A dangerous and exhausting journey.
But don’t count on them to complain. “There were people worse off than us on the way. We helped them, we gave them food,” says Feniel Revencharles. “We lost a few pounds,” adds Nancy.
They traveled most of the way by bus. Night tours saved them the price of a hotel room. They crossed rivers by boat. On foot, too. They walked sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of 20, 30, 40 migrants, who came together to protect themselves. To boost morale. Feniel carried children on his shoulders.
As they recount their arrival at Roxham Road, greeted by police and border agents, Feniel and Nancy’s eyes light up. “We were under arrest, but we were in Canada. Safe. We were improving our lot. »
With Sarah R. Champagne