Emergency

France Hurtubise, a retired Communications delegate living in Montréal, looks back on her experience in the humanitarian sector and shares her story with us. Over the course of 25 years working abroad, France traveled to four continents and worked in countries heavily impacted by conflicts and disasters. In May 2022, she published “Grandeur et dénuement”, an account of her years with the Red Cross (ICRC, IFRC and CRC) and the UN.

Joe Michielsen is entering his third decade as a volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross in southern Alberta. Discover why he thinks “volunteering is the best job”.

Mondays are always the busiest day for the psychology team at Lviv Clinical Hospital of Emergency and Intensive Care in western Ukraine. Follow psychiatrist Dr. Oleh Berezyuk and his team around the hospital as they meet with new and existing patients across the rehabilitation, intensive care, surgery and internal medicine units.

What does it mean to live through a year of armed conflict? For some, it means having to leave behind everything they know for somewhere safer. For others, it means spending hours in bomb shelters, or hours without electricity. For too many it means being separated from family, struggling to access basic medical care and not knowing what will happen next. 

A new program has been launched to help community service organizations in Canada strengthen their internal structures and practices as they recover from the pandemic. This will, in turn, assist them as they continue to support their communities.

When Hurricane Fiona hit William Coney’s quaint neighbourhood on September 24, 2022, the Canadian Red Cross volunteer did what he knew best: help others. He says volunteering gave him a sense of agency. “Certainly, it was a lot nicer to be autonomous and active. This was a way I could help my local community.”

Sarah Parisio's role within the Canadian Red Cross involves supporting people impacted by disasters through leading teams of fellow humanitarians who respond to emergencies in Canada and around the world. Discover how she brought with her skills developed through responding to emergencies in Canada to an international context and what new knowledge she brought back home in return.

Originating on the coast of West Africa on September 14, 2022, Fiona’s destructive character took the world by surprise. Reported wind gusts ranged from 100 to 140 km/h, rainfall exceeded 100 mm in some locations and hundreds of thousands of people experienced power outages. Sadly, Fiona holds the record for being the most intense storm to ever hit Canada. Denis Lessard, a Quebec Canadian Red Cross volunteer since 2006, was deployed in Newfoundland on October 2, 2022, following this severe weather event.