Forgetting their small suitcase which rolled further, the three little girls aged 10, 7 and 4 rush towards their Montreal aunt who has come to welcome them at Trudeau airport. This Shabbat was going to be like no other.
“Despite everything that is happening, right now is a moment of joy,” says Michelle Koren, who has lived in Quebec for five years.
Her brother, sister-in-law and their three children will only be visiting her for two weeks. They are Israelis, who arrived here from Athens on Friday.
PHOTO CATHERINE LEFEBVRE SPECIAL COLLABORATION, THE PRESS
Michelle Koren, with her niece and brother.
” I am a musician. There will be no work for me for a while, all shows are canceled,” said Adam Tal while his wife, Hadastal, was too upset to say a single word.
Mr. Tal says he has two weeks here to try to clear his head, but he doubts he will succeed.
“I had a very good friend who was murdered at the music festival. I had never lost a friend. »
He doesn’t know if he will feel better here in the next few days. “I worry about my family, my friends who remain there. »
Anat Basanta, a Canadian citizen, returned on the same flight from Athens, which she found without assistance from the Canadian government.
PHOTO CATHERINE LEFEBVRE SPECIAL COLLABORATION, THE PRESS
Anat Basanta, a Canadian citizen who was near Tel Aviv.
“I went to Israel on October 3 to visit my sister, near Tel Aviv. »
She says it took her and her sister a long time to understand the magnitude of what had just happened. “Israelis are used to tensions […]to the sirens, to taking refuge in the shelters they have, in the houses…”
It was over the hours, through television, that they understood that this time, it was more serious than ever and that they saw the first images of the massacres in the kibbutzim.
“My family here told me to come home quickly,” she relates.
With her arms full of flowers, a doll and a dog, Raquel came to the airport to pick up the family of her cousin Michelle, a Canadian resident who had gone to attend a wedding in Israel. It was to take place two days after the massacres.
She also returned via Athens, with her three-year-old daughter and her husband, without help from the Canadian government.
“I feel in shock. We heard so many bombs. I’m almost afraid of my shadow now. »
With no news from the Canadian government since last Tuesday, Anouk Desrosiers-Roussel decided to take matters into her own hands. With her Israeli husband and her two-year-old little boy, she will fly to Dubai on Saturday, then take a flight to Montreal.
“If we don’t have information, we’re just sitting here not knowing what to do, and I find that unacceptable. Basically, we take care of our own business, because we cannot count on the Government of Canada. That’s what we understand,” she said in an interview from Tel Aviv.
Another Canadian woman who lives in the capital, whose husband and youngest son only hold Israeli citizenship, was informed Friday morning by Global Affairs that she had to leave her husband and son behind – a refusal which had not location, government officials confirmed. The situation would have been corrected.