The sun rose over the City of Cap-Haitien, located on the northern coast of Haiti, and found Alain Edmond already awake. Standing on top of the villa which had been in his family for generations, the young man looked at the metropolis sprawling from the hilltop neighborhood of Bel-Air. This was where he grew up, and he hadn't seen his home in almost two decades. The view brought a smile to his dark, handsome face.
"Lakay se lakay, home sweet home," Alain said to himself, and he closed his eyes, thinking about all the twists and turns that his life had taken lately. Twenty years ago, his parents, Francois Luc Edmond and Marianne Jacques-Edmond took him and his sister Annabelle to distant Montreal, Quebec, due to the political unrest pitting the supporters of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide against the paramilitary regime that uprooted him.
Even after the matter was settled and peace returned to the Republic of Haiti, the Edmond family remained in the City of Montreal, Quebec. Now, decades later, Alain had come home at last. Alain had never truly felt at home in the City of Montreal, where they spoke a French altogether different from the one he'd learned at College Notre Dame Du Perpetuel Secours in Cap-Haitien. The world and its linguistics, man...
The City of Montreal, Quebec, had scores of Haitians among its populace, to the point where the French Canadians had virtually conceded the borough of Montreal-Nord to the Haitian immigrant folks. Alain liked being surrounded by his own people, even though he made many friends among the French Canadians, the Lebanese and others. Always be a man of the people, Alain reminded himself. As a newcomer to Montreal in those days, a stranger in a strange land, he knew he would need friends and allies...
Alain always missed his hometown, and had fond memories of it. Hanging out at Labadie beach with his family on Sunday afternoons. Going to get ice cream with his sister at Place Rue Dix Huit, in the park located across the big cathedral and the small campus of Universite Roi Henri Christophe. Hanging out at the family estate in Quartier Morin, a small, storied commune located half an hour from metropolitan Cap-Haitien. Ah, good times indeed.
To the outside world, the Republic of Haiti was a strange place. It seemed that most people on the planet did not know the country existed prior to the earthquake which devastated its capital, Port-Au-Prince, almost a decade ago. The fact that Haiti is the first independent black republic, having repelled the armies of the French, the English and the Spanish, seemed to have escaped the notice of world history.
Most people thought of Alain's homeland as a poor nation eternally in need of foreign aid, forever at the mercy of the United Nations and its U.S. overlords. My curse upon them all, Alain thought, and his inner Haitian nationalist rose in his chest. Even after he became a Canadian citizen, lost his foreign accent, learned to love the Montreal Canadiens Hockey team, and embraced the western way of life, he was still a Haitian man at heart.
After graduating from the University of Montreal with his bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice in 2011, Alain enrolled at McGill University where he earned his MBA. Alain looked for work in his field, and couldn't find any, in spite of his impeccable credentials. He took a bank teller position with the Bank of Montreal, and soon rose to the rank of account manager, then branch manager.
