Medical student Thierry Pauyo, front, and some of the cousins he rescued in Haiti and brought home to Montreal.John Morstad/The Globe and Mail
At a time in life when many couples contemplate empty nests and quiet retirement, Eric and Nicole Pauyo are embracing parenthood all over again. So many kids are overrunning their Montreal home these days that the household has been compared to a reality TV show.
The family has been called Pauyo Plus 8 - the number of kids who have suddenly showed up in their home in the last few weeks. This story is born out of tragedy, however. The couple's eight new charges are nieces and nephews left orphaned by Haiti's earthquake.
"I didn't think twice," said Mrs. Pauyo, a 62-year-old retired nurse who raised three grown children of her own with her husband, a physician. "It's like somebody drowning. You don't think about it. These kids had nobody, nobody."
The children's flight out of Haiti is the stuff of a made-for-the-screen narrative too: They were rescued from the chaos of Port-au-Prince by the Pauyos's Quebec-born son, a Harvard medical student who happened to be working at a hospital there when the earthquake struck - and who began a frenzied effort to bring his relatives to Canada.
"At times," Thierry says, "I felt like it was Mission Impossible."
The Pauyos's extraordinary efforts are a testament to the bonds tying the Haitian diaspora to its countrymen. The couple's Montreal home also offers a glimpse into the challenges awaiting thousands of households in the coming years.
Up to 3,000 Haitians are expected to settle in Quebec under family-reunification rules that were loosened to help earthquake victims, and thousands more will arrive under fast-tracked Canadian immigration policies.
Already, the art-filled house in the well-to-do bedroom community of Town of Mount Royal has been transformed into a hive of activity. The Pauyos have bought new bunk beds and installed a shower in the basement. They settled the younger children into local schools, purchased uniforms and lunchboxes, and bought alarm clocks to make sure they're up on time.
The kids, aged four to 21, have started to learn the rudimentary routines of Canadian life, from watching hockey to using the Métro. One boy left the house without a coat recently. Mrs. Pauyo caught up with him.
Their past catches up with them too. A psychologist and social worker have been brought in to treat flashbacks and nightmares from the Jan. 12 tremor. The four-year-old, Adriano, whose leg was broken when his home collapsed on him, still asks why his father hasn't called.
The answer lies in the ruins of Jan. 12. When the magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, most of the children were home with their parents - Eric Pauyo's brother and sister-in-law. Their home collapsed. The parents were killed. Miraculously, all the children survived.
That same day, 28-year-old Thierry Pauyo was volunteering at a hospital in Haiti's Central Plateau with a Boston-based charity, Partners in Health. First, he tended to the wounded who were brought in from Port-au-Prince, then he set out to the wasted capital to look for his cousins.
Thierry arrived at their home in central Port-au-Prince only to find a pile of flattened rubble. "They're dead," he thought. But he learned that his cousins had survived, and he found them, hungry, thirsty and homeless, in the Champs de Mars square next to the presidential palace.
He contacted his parents in Montreal. "I have the kids here. They're safe," he said.
Thierry returned to work at the hospital for two weeks, where the children joined him. (Two are cousins who lost their parents prior to the earthquake and were in the care of the couple that died.) Then he tried frantically to get his relatives to Canada.
He shunted between the Canadian and U.S. embassies in the capital - six kids have American citizenship through their late father - and then flew to Chicago to appear before a judge to secure legal guardianship. Meanwhile, the other two kids were airlifted on a Canadian military plane to Montreal.
"It was tricky getting them to safety," he said. "But it was a natural reaction. They had nothing. There was no one to take care of them."
Now the family is transferring legal guardianship from Thierry to his parents. One evening this week, after the gaggle of kids filed in from school and the house filled with activity, the new, enlarged family gathered in the kitchen. An extra table has been added to accommodate everyone.
The kids polished off a large platter of chicken thighs and an entire chocolate cake, cleared their dishes, and spoke quietly and haltingly of the tragedy that took their parents and left their homeland in distress. Then one of the cousins, 17-year-old Augustin, nodded toward Thierry, who is preparing to return to Haiti to complete his medical work.
"He's my hero," he said.
For Mrs. Pauyo, meanwhile, there is no looking back. One day recently, she found one of the children at home crying. She tried to console her by saying that, despite her tragic losses, there was promise in her future.
"I told her that in her misfortune, there was also good fortune," she said. "Because now she was in Canada, a great country where the sky is the limit. I said it rains sometimes. But rain can make new flowers grow."