RCMP Officer, Montreal Couple, Ont. Nurse Confirmed Dead In Haiti

An RCMP officer is the latest Canadian to be confirmed dead following the earthquake in Haiti.

Sgt. Mark Gallagher of Nova Scotia (pictured below) leaves behind his wife and two children. Gallagher joined the RCMP on January 18, 1998, after thirteen years with the Moncton Police in New Brunswick.

“Sgt. Gallagher was one of almost 100 brave Canadian police officers currently part of the UN mission in Haiti,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote in a statement.

“These men and women have left the comfort of their homes and families to dedicate themselves to providing a better future to one of the poorest countries in this hemisphere.  This is the first time that a serving Canadian police officer has been killed on active duty in an international peacekeeping operation.”

So far, four Canadians have died and four more are still missing.

As the world’s eyes were riveted on frantic efforts to rescue Haitians from their worst earthquake in two centuries, Pascale Anglade hoped that her parents would emerge from the rubble of a home where they were trapped.

But late Wednesday, she learned that her parents Georges and Mireille Anglade did not survive. They became the second and third Canadians killed by the Caribbean catastrophe.

Yvonne Martin, an Elmira, Ont., nurse (pictured above) who arrived in the capital scant hours before the disaster, was also killed in another area when the quake struck.

“He died and my mom died also,” Pascale Anglade said of her parents in a hushed voice from her home in Charlotte, N.C., during a telephone interview with The Canadian Press.

Eyewitnesses confirmed that her parents and their friends who owned the home had died, Pascale Anglade said.

She remembered her parents, who had been married 43 years, as “beautiful. . . great people.”

“My dad taught for 30 years at the University of Quebec in Montreal. My dad worked for years for the UN. They lived in Haiti for many years, that’s where they raised me and my sister.”

Georges Anglade, 65, came to Canada in 1969 and was one of the founders of the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, where he was a professor of social geography until 2002.

A former political prisoner under the Duvalier regime, he was active in pushing for democracy in the poverty stricken country and wrote several books.

He returned to live in Haiti temporarily in the mid-1990s, serving in the cabinet of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide for 10 months.

Pascale Anglade said her parents had recently returned to Haiti for a family holiday.

“We had just left there. We were with them up until 10 days ago. It’s really a shame.”

She last talked to her parents two days ago. A slight lilt came into her voice when she was asked what the conversation revolved around.

“My children, what else?” she said. “They were grandparents. They talked about the children.

“That’s all they wanted. They were thrilled with the grandchildren that they had and wanted to spend time with them. They were so happy to have seen them and they were making plans to see them again when they were back from Haiti.”

Anglade has two children while her older sister also has two.

Yvonne Martin, a nurse from Elmira, Ont., died when the powerful tremor levelled her guest house.

She was part of a group that had just arrived to set up mobile clinics in poor rural areas.

Other Canadians barely survived the horror.

Sophie Perez was at work when the terrifying tremor gripped Haiti – and refused to let go.

It was terrifying. The quake lasted for more than a minute. We were at the office when it happened, and the whole office was shaking really hard,” said the country director for the aid agency Care.

People were screaming, crying, running. Everything was moving. I saw a building of nine floors completely collapse right in front of me.”

The witness account relayed by telephone to Care Canada was one of few dispatches from the quake-stricken Caribbean country, where communications were all but levelled.

Children were still in school when the earthquake hit, so there are many children trapped,” Perez said. It’s horrifying. The slums on the hills have also completely collapsed. We’ve heard of landslides, with entire communities being wiped out.”

For Canadian families and aid agencies, it was a harrowing day of anxious waiting and frustrating attempts to connect by phone and email.

One Canadian woman who was trapped under rubble in a building was rescued after sending a text message to someone who relayed her plea for help to Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department.

Officials warned that more casualties were expected as search-and-rescue operations unfolded.

Eighty Canadian police officers serving in Haiti were fine. But one RCMP officer, Supt. Douglas Coates of Ottawa, is still missing.

The son of Serge Marcil, a former Liberal MP and member of the Quebec legislature, said he was waiting in Quebec City for word on his father, who had gone to Haiti on business.

“I used the official line and I left his description and all that stuff and we’re waiting,” said Olivier Marcil, who is an adviser to Premier Jean Charest.

Marcil arrived in Haiti with two associates, one of whom reached his wife to tell her the pair were all right. But Marcil was still unaccounted for Wednesday.

Aid agency UNICEF was helping recovery efforts at a school that collapsed with children inside.

It was not immediately clear how many students and teachers escaped the building in Jacmel, a town of about 40,000 on the south coast of the earthquake-stricken country.

Our staff are assisting in relief efforts with the school, and a number of people have been evacuated in Jacmel and are staying in the main square,” said Christopher Tidey, a UNICEF Canada spokesman.

UNICEF’s office in Port-au-Prince has endured severe structural damage,” he said.

But as far as we know, all of our staff are accounted for and are currently assisting in relief operations.”

That included lone Canadian Julie Bergeron, a child protection specialist.

Roads are unsafe to travel because there is no lighting, and many transportation routes have collapsed, Tidey said.

UNICEF staff were working to provide clean water and sanitation services to prevent the spread of disease. They were also setting up temporary emergency shelter and telecommunications services.

Virtually all telephone land lines are down and functioning ones are being used for rescue efforts, Tidey said. So it’s pretty much impossible to get in touch unless you’re using sat(satellite) phones, and even those apparently aren’t working very well.”

Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin was looking to locate some of the 65 employees at its office in Petionville.

The Montreal-based company, which h
as operated in Haiti for about 30 years, set up a residence for workers unable to return home.

Mining company Somine SA was still scrambling to find several employees but doesn’t believe any were inside the rented home across from the United Nations building when it tumbled.