CABARATE, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC -- The world has essentially been imprisoned by a virus. Borders are closed, flights are cancelled and cities are in lockdown. Thousands of Canadians are now separated from the ones they love. These are extraordinary and uncertain times.
In my recent reporting for CTV National News, I have spoken to many families who are desperately trying to be reunited with those now trapped thousands of kilometres from home. Their fear, their sense of powerlessness, their desperation has an aching similarity to a story I have been working on for the last six months for W5.
It’s called Prisoner in Paradise and instead of a nasty virus keeping people apart, it’s the story of one Canadian family who has been separated off and on again for 10 excruciating years because of a natural disaster, changing laws and the politics of three countries.
Back in 2010 Christal and Vaden Earle launched a project in the Dominican Republic to build homes for the impoverished Haitian community. Much of their time was spent at a sprawling dump far from the all-inclusive resorts, where Haitians would try to scrap together a living by picking through the waste. It was there that the Earles met a parentless toddler named Widlene. Their attempts to adopt her have been herculean, and stymied by a series of very unfortunate events.
Her adoption paperwork was destroyed by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that wiped out entire neighbourhoods in Port au Prince, Haiti. The Dominican Republic changed laws that made Widlene stateless, a citizen of nowhere. And the Canadian government has rejected repeated legal attempts to bring her to Canada.