http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/23/for_one_orphan_cost_of_lacmegantic_tragedy_is_conflict_over_her_future.html
At 18 months old, Milliana Alliance only knows a handful of words and phrases. “I’m cold.” “I want water.” “Mommy.” “Daddy.”
She has been saying those last two words less often lately. On July 6, when a train jumped the tracks and exploded in downtown Lac-Megantic, her parents were asleep in their third-floor apartment above an antique store near the blast. Jimmy Sirois and Marie Semie Alliance are missing and presumed dead.
Milliana is one of three children to lose both parents in the disaster, according to a report in Le Journal de Montréal. The other two were siblings. An estimated 21 children lost at least one parent that night.
They join the countless survivors who, though lucky in a way, have seen their lives shattered by what happened at Lac-Megantic.
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On the afternoon of July 5, Sirois’s mother, Solange Belanger, took Milliana to stay with her in nearby Woburn to escape the muggy summer heat.
Milliana was safe and sound in the country when the oil-bearing Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic train exploded and scorched half of her hometown to the ground.
But there was discord sewn in her salvation. The two sides of Milliana’s fractured family seem to want what’s best for her, but they have dramatically different ideas of how she should be raised.
In a combative interview with Le Journal de Montréal published July 8, two days after the accident, Belanger said she had “saved a life.”
She also lamented that Marie Semie’s mother, Marie Precieuse, had taken Milliana to Montreal on July 7.
Milliana is staying with her maternal grandmother and aunt now, in the city’s suburb of St. Leonard.
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She is eating well — many of her favourite dishes are Haitian staples like plantains and chicken and rice, her aunt Rose Minouche said.
She has lots of young cousins to keep her distracted, as well as books and movies that the aunt bought her, “so she isn’t sad; so she’s happy.”
At 18 months, even terrible memories can be fleeting — Milliana seems to be forgetting “maman” and “papa.”
“The first week after the events, she was saying ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’ more,” said Minouche.
But as the little girl returns to the innocence of childhood, it seems the disaster at Lac-Megantic has not yet finished exacting its toll on her.
Though Jimmy Sirois had raised the girl from birth, he is not her biological father. So the Alliance family, though they have lived three hours away from Lac-Megantic since Milliana was born, are the only blood relatives she has left.
Still, Belanger worries that being wrenched from familiar surroundings will be too traumatic for her granddaughter.
“It’s too much for her,” Belanger said. “She lost both her parents, she lost her house, and now she’s losing her grandmother.”
Claude Chouinard, Belanger’s husband, said his wife saw Milliana about five days a week, and often picked her up from daycare.
It wasn’t uncommon for Milliana to stay with them in the country, he said. When Milliana slept over, Belanger “woke her up, she made her little sandwiches.”
But the day after the explosion that orphaned her, Milliana’s grandmother Marie Precieuse came to Woburn to take the girl.
“She took her in her arms, and she left,” Chouinard recalled.
“There’s no hate between the families, but she hasn’t respected what the social workers say, which is not to disrupt the child’s family situation.”
The Belangers and the Alliances could hardly be more different.
In Montreal with her Haitian family, Milliana is learning Creole and bits of English.
In rural Woburn, she learned animal sounds, mooing along with the cows of the local farms.
The Alliance family in Montreal is big, boisterous, and close — large family gatherings often centre on Marie Precieuse’s apartment.
Belanger and Chouinard, early risers, lead a calmer existence in the Quebec countryside.
And though Chouinard insists he is fond of the Alliances, both families have expressed skepticism about how the other plans to take care of their beloved Milliana.
“Maybe destiny will have her be raised in a Haitian context,” Chouinard said, but adds: “It’s not the Quebec culture.”
“We could raise her in the middle of the country, in a big beautiful house. They have a little apartment.”
“A nice house is nothing,” said Milliana’s maternal aunt. “The kid isn’t just going to play with nice toys.”
“I think we have more of a right to keep her.”
Still, Chouinard wants to be conciliatory. He said he was sure Milliana would be raised well, and acknowledged Marie Precieuse’s strong right to be involved in her granddaughter’s life.
“It’s the daughter of her daughter,” he said. “It must be a great comfort to have Milliana in her arms.”
“We hope the child isn’t marked by this,” Chouinard added. “That’s the main thing.”