Raymond Setlakwe’s grandfather, who lost his five brothers in the mass murder, moved to Quebec, where he established a family business and helped other migrants
It was the year 2000 and Canada’s Armenian community was still fighting for official Canadian recognition of the Armenian genocide that began in 1915, when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey were slaughtered in the dying days of the Ottoman empire.
Mr. Setlakwe, who died on Oct. 14 at the age of 93 in his hometown of Thetford Mines, Que., proved crucial in the fight to recognize the Armenian genocide. A Senate motion had been prepared by Shirley Maheu, a Montreal senator who was close to the Armenian community, but there remained ardent opposition to the idea, including within the Prime Minister’s Office. The decision was taken to have the newly minted senator, Mr. Setlakwe, second the motion.
Decades of ignoring the Armenian genocide had made it easier for genocidal regimes that came later, the senator said. “Had this been done before the Holocaust, Hitler would have not been able to say in 1939, ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’” In an area that is overwhelmingly French-Canadian, the Setlakwe name has always been distinctive. But it was also unusual for other reasons. The family’s original surname was Sarafian, but it was changed after Aziz fled the Turkish city of Mardin, where his five brothers were killed in Turkish massacres during the 1890s. Setlakwe is a deformation of the phrase meaning “six brothers” in Arabic.
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