Quebec's Haitian community traces back to two distinct waves of migration: The first made up of professionals, educators, and civil servants fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship arrived between the late 1960s and mid-1970s with skills Quebec urgently needed as it modernized its institutions.

The second came after 1971, when Jean-Claude Duvalier inherited his father's lifetime presidency along with his brutality. This wave brought working people like factory workers, and service workers who faced a far steeper climb as less credentialled, more exposed, and settling into a city that wasn't always ready for them.

Haiti became, for roughly two decades, the leading source of immigrants to Quebec, and most of those immigrants ended up in Montreal. They needed help, and in the summer of 1972, a group of Haitian students decided to provide it.

Quebec's Haitian community traces back to two distinct waves of migration: The first made up of professionals, educators, and civil servants fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship arrived between the late 1960s and mid-1970s with skills Quebec urgently needed as it modernized its institutions.

The second came after 1971, when Jean-Claude Duvalier inherited his father's lifetime presidency along with his brutality. This wave brought working people like factory workers, and service workers who faced a far steeper climb as less credentialled, more exposed, and settling into a city that wasn't always ready for them.

Haiti became, for roughly two decades, the leading source of immigrants to Quebec, and most of those immigrants ended up in Montreal. They needed help, and in the summer of 1972, a group of Haitian students decided to provide it.