Migrant workers killed in Ontario crash were 'breadwinners'

CBC/

Georgina Graham remembers talking to her husband for the last time on the phone early in the morning of Aug. 17, 2011, from her home in Manchester Parish, Jamaica. Omar Graham, 33, was spending his second season in Canada as a migrant worker at a tobacco farm near Paris, Ont., far away from his wife, his grandmother and his three sons, including three-week-old infant Onjordie. He promised to call his wife later that day after work but never did. Georgina rang his cellphone several times, but no one answered. She said she first heard about Omar being in an accident from people in her district. A cousin who lived in Canada drove to the farm to confirm that Omar Graham died in a crash. "I lost a husband and my husband was the breadwinner of our home," Georgina Graham told CBC News on Tuesday. "He never met his baby son." Graham died after the pickup truck he was driving flipped off the road near Paris, Ont. The pickup was hauling a trailer packed with tobacco, and Graham was thrown from the vehicle when it rolled. But Georgina said she knows little about the details of her husband's accident. "He crashed and died; that is all I know," his wife said. "I don't think I should be in Jamaica sitting down here struggling to find out what really happened." The families of the 10 migrant workers killed Monday in a two-vehicle crash that also claimed the life of truck driver in southwestern Ontario are likely now experiencing the same shock and despair as Georgina Graham felt — and like her, also must deal with their families' main income-earners being taken from them. Stan Raper, national co-ordinator for the Agriculture Workers Alliance, told CBC News on Tuesday that most of the migrant workers killed in the crash were men with families who sent financial support to their home countries.  More >>