"They had a daughter. Emma. She was older than me, already married. Her husband was older, a military officer, in the army, but also involved with the peacekeepers.. It was through him, actually, that Mom and I were rescued from the charnel house that was Rwanda. Etienne was a personal friend of General Romeo Dallaire, the famous Canadian peacekeeper in Rwanda who wrote that amazing book about his experiences and suffered from extreme PTSD from the horrors that he saw. He handed her over to Etienne who flew her back with him to Montreal. He was already engaged to marry Emma, who was still in her early twenties. I think there was at least a fifteen year difference of age between them.
"The Gagnon's were very faithful Catholics, already a very rare breed in Quebec, with a very robust social conscience. They were also friends of Jean Vanier, the founder of the L'Arche communities for people with mental handicaps. They very gladly took my mother in, and basically supported her as she raised me. They became the only family that we had. And even if I said there was nothing kind about them, that had more to do with later developments, but really towards us they were extraordinarily generous, even despite their sometimes evident discomfort that we were black...
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