Visa denied to daughter robs woman of dying wish CANCER PATIENT, Cynthia Powell, will be buried in Montreal, Canada today. But family members say that she died without receiving her dying wish to see her daughter Angella Rearrie, whom she had not seen in five years. Ms. Rearrie, a Jamaican, said she had been denied a visitor's visa twice by the Canadian High Commission in Kingston before being granted permission. Ms. Rearrie told a Canadian newspaper that she obtained a special entry permit from Canada's Immigration Minister, Elinor Caplan, to travel to Montreal to see Ms. Powell, who had been sick with cancer in the palliative care unit of Mount Sinai Hospital in Cote St. Luc. But she arrived too late last Saturday, coming eight hours after her mother had died, according to an article in the Montreal Gazette. The Gazette quoted Ms. Rearrie as saying that she missed saying goodbye to her dying mother because Canadian bureaucrats would not let her into the country sooner. "I was hoping to spend a week with my mother before she died," she told Gazette reporter, Jennifer Scrimger. "When my sister came to pick me up at the airport, she gave me the bad news." The newspaper reported that Ms. Rearrie said she had applied for a visa in April at the local Canadian High Commission but that the woman in charge of her case "said she couldn't give me the visa (and) she said 'if you apply again, you're not going to get it,' that's what she said to me." The main reason cited was that she could not provide a bank statement. "I just invested in a property," said Ms. Rearrie, who is a farmer and shopkeeper. "I didn't have (a lot of) money in an account." Brian O'Connor, immigration programme manager at the Canadian High Commission, told The Gleaner yesterday that he could not discuss the case because of Canada's Privacy Act, which "protects personal information from third parties." But in general, he said that applicants must satisfy the visa officer that they are travelling for a legitimate purpose and plan to return to Jamaica. There is also another remedy, that the Minister of Immigration can authorise a special ministerial permit, he said. It took several calls and letters by the Mount Sinai Make-a-wish programme, a Canadian charity which grants palliative patient's final wishes, and an appeal to Minister Caplan through a Member of Parliament, Clifford Lincoln, before Ms. Rearrie was allowed to visit under the last option. But the hassle was worth it because news that Ms. Rearrie was coming, said Mira Mierzwinski, head nurse at Mount Sinai palliative care unit, had made her mother happy. "It's a shame (because) when I told (Ms Powell that Angella was coming) it put a big smile on her face. She was radiant. It was like she was already there."
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