Wells: PM will see Haiti's struggle first hand Toronto Star
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be among the first world leaders to visit post-quake Haiti when he lands there Monday.
Harper will meet with Haiti's leaders to talk about both rebuilding priorities and challenges facing the emergency relief effort. He also will visit some of the hundreds of Canadians helping deliver aid before he returns to Ottawa late Tuesday.
For news, photos and videos from Haiti, go to thestar.com . have not been privy to Prime Minister Harper's full itinerary when he arrives Monday on a mission to see Canadian troops at work, but I have viewed enough of earthquake ravaged Haiti to know that in relative terms, Jacmel is as good as it gets.It isn't the ceaseless squalor of the encampments in Port-au-Prince or the wall-to-wall tragedies of the smaller cities between the capital and this point on the coast where the aquamarine water of the Caribbean Sea laps onto the beach.
According to city officials, there are 15,000 displaced persons in Jacmel. Many of them are miserably surviving in multi-family army tents behind the Lycée Pinchinat which bakes under the noonday sun and is redolent with smoke from cooking fires.
I'm not saying it's not awful. It is awful. But the numbers are relatively small.
This is a city with a cultural core, an artistic centre which could and can be fixed if UNESCO and the Haitian government and the country's Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National get it right.
Jean Ruid Senatas isn't waiting for that. The manager of the Hotel Florita throws open the vast cerulean steel doors on the front of the hotel, a landmark on the Rue du Commerce.
