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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Despite their troubled and sometimes cruel history as neighbours, Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean said the recent Haitian earthquake appears to have brought it closer to the next-door Dominican Republic.
Jean applauded the co-operation between those countries during a stop in the Dominican Republic on her way home Wednesday after visiting her native Haiti on the other end of the island.
She thanked the Dominican government for facilitating international aid efforts in Haiti, and for its own quick response in helping a neighbour with which it has often had rocky relations.
Jean made only a peripheral reference to that troubled past - which includes a once-mightier Haiti conquering the Dominican Republic in the 19th century; a racist backlash against Haitians that included a murder campaign in 1937; and an ongoing, increasingly surreal disparity in quality of life.
Jean noted that she once heard scornful comments about her own Haitian background during a trip to the Dominican Republic.
Thanks in part to greater political stability, the Dominican Republic has zoomed far past its neighbour on every quality-of-life metric from wealth to education.
And Jean thanked the richer Dominican for being a good neighbour.
"I believe we have reached a historic point in the relationship between these two nations," she said at the end of her trip.
"All of humanity could learn a lesson from that."
Jean was already scheduled to visit the Dominican in May, at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as Canada sees the country as an increasingly important strategic ally in the Americas.
The meeting was moved up by the Haitian earthquake. The Dominican Republic's importance as a Canadian foreign-policy hub was underscored by that disaster. Canadian aid efforts flowed through there, and will continue to as Canada appears poised to make Haiti its No. 1 foreign priority after the Afghanistan military mission winds down in 2011.
Canada already sends 700,000 tourists to the Dominican each year, and is the biggest foreign investor there thanks to a Canadian mining, banking, and engineering presence through companies like Scotiabank, Barrick, and SNC Lavalin. The country is also considered a like-minded ally in international affairs.
Several dozen Dominican reporters and cameramen showed up at the presidential palace to see Jean read a statement in Spanish thanking the country for its support following the Jan. 12 earthquake.
She delivered that same message in a meeting with President Leonel Fernandez and members of his cabinet at the sprawling palace Wednesday.
"Canada was very impressed by the work of the Dominican Republic in disaster efforts," Jean told a meeting with local NGOs.
"The message to (Haitians) is that they are not alone."
The island of Hispanola has, for much of its history, been a story in two solitudes. Each year, the Dominican Republic still celebrates the day - Feb. 27, 1844 - it gained its independence from Haiti.
Anti-Haitian sentiment reached a boiling point in October 1937 when, in less than a week, thousands of native Haitians living on their side of the border were murdered under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
Jean described being taken aback by comments she heard during a trip to the Dominican years ago, before she became governor general.
She told a round-table of women's groups that people would say to her, "'You're Haitian? That can't be."' Jean said, "There were stereotypes and prejudices."
Jean said she was thrilled to see the countries working together. Basic statistics indicate how, over time, the Dominican Republic has vastly overtaken its once-richer neighbour:
-The literacy rate in Haiti is 53 per cent. In the Dominican Republic, it's 87 per cent.
-The Dominican GDP per capita is $8,200 - 118th in the world, according to the CIA World Factbook. In Haiti, it's $1,300 a year, which places it at 203rd worldwide.
-The Dominican spends almost three times more on education as a share of its Gross Domestic Product.
Jean made several stops during her trip to Santo Domingo after an emotional two-day visit to her Haitian homeland.
She praised the work of Dominican feminists and heard about their struggle to deal with violence against women. She told them how Canada had made major strides since the 1970s, by convincing men that it was in their own interest to tackle the problem.
She described working with groups that started 150 shelters for battered women in Quebec, and exported their model to other provinces.
She said they worked to convince lawyers and politicians that laws needed to change, and fire-fighters and police officers to report cases where they spotted possible abuse during a house call.
"(We told them), 'When you see something in your building, in the neighbourhood where you live, you have a responsibility."'
She urged the women to remember a slogan she'd found useful, because she said had even garnered applause from men in various countries she'd visited: "Empowering women is empowering the nation."
Jean ended the day at an orphanage that has become crowded in recent weeks with Haitian children, who are staying there after receiving medical care in Santo Domingo.
The project started when Canadian diplomats heard of people claiming to be the relatives of Haitian children, without any evidence to back it up. Worried about possible human-trafficking, the diplomats started working with the centre - Hogar Vida y Esperanza - to take in the kids.
About two-dozen of those children, many of them accompanied by relatives, waited outside Wednesday to meet Jean.
A number of them with missing limbs were lying on gurneys. One 19-year-old girl missing a leg held her baby daughter, who had also had her leg amputated after the quake.
A little boy named Johan was stuck in the rubble for eight days. He didn't speak for two weeks after he was found.
Like many here, he was severely traumatized. Though he appears to be about five years old, Johan doesn't know how old he is. He remains partly paralyzed on his left side. But on Wednesday, he was laughing constantly and going around asking every visitor for a kiss.
Jean spoke to him in Creole. After his demand for a second smooch from the governor general she tilted her cheek and gushed, "What a charmer!"
A Canadian diplomat noted that a number of the children in that yard were laughing again, and she cited Johan as just one example.
"For two weeks he didn't speak. They wondered whether he had a pre-existing mental condition," she said.
"But he's perking up."
