Police in Montreal say they have found all of the missing people
All seven people who died in a building fire in Old Montreal have now been found.
Their backgrounds are different: two friends who grew up in Pakistan together, an 18-year-old spending the night with friends, and a well-known photographer.
Many people were staying in the building in rented rooms. One person had lived there for more than 30 years.
All of them died in the building near Place D’Youville, where a fire broke out early on the morning of March 16. The Montreal police are still looking into what caused the fire.
In the days and weeks after the fire, friends and family came to the area. Some of them left flowers near the burned stone facade while firefighters carefully looked through the rubble for victims.
Montreal police said last week that the search is over because the last two bodies have been taken out of the building.
Here is what we know about the victims:
Dania Zafa
Dania Zafar, a Pakistani who lives in Toronto, was staying on the third floor of the building the night it caught fire.
According to her father, Zafar Mahmood, Zafar had planned to stay in an Airbnb unit in the building in Old Montreal for one night. She called her family in Pakistan the night before the fire and showed them around her Airbnb unit. She said she chose it because of its uniqueness.
Mahmood said through tears, “I think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time with all the odds against her, and we lost her.”
His daughter was a dreamer, he said. She was a free spirit who studied fine arts abroad and ran her own online business. “She wanted to do things in her own way,” Mahmood said.
Zafar was also kind and friendly. She had a lot of houseplants in her Toronto apartment, and she loved cats. Everyone she met remembered her.
Saniya Kha
Dania Zafar and Saniya Khan were best friends. Saniya Khan was a 32-year-old doctor from Pakistan who was studying medicine in Detroit. In an interview, Saniya’s father, Mazhar Khan, said that they met as children in Pakistan and were inseparable.
He said that they both liked to travel and write, and that they were working on a book together.
Saniya Khan was working toward a master’s degree in public health, but she still made time to talk to her father, who said that she called him almost every day.
Mazhar Khan said that his daughter was kind and always thought of other people. When her family needed her, she was there for them. He said that she sometimes knew what other people needed before they did.
He said, “I feel like a part of my body and my heart is gone.”
Walid Belkahl
Walid Belkahla, a student who was 18 at the time, was downtown with friends the night of the fire. Belkahla’s father, Rab Belkahla, says that when the night got late, a friend invited him to stay in a rented room. He did.
Raba said that he was proud of his son, who he said was a good student who worked hard and did community service.
Charlie Lacroi
Friends and family who came to the site of the fire last week to “say goodbye” said that Charlie Lacroix, who was 18, was a happy girl who lit up a room.
Kelly Ann, who said Lacroix was her best friend, said, “She was a little ball of joy and she always knew what to say.” “Everyone could always count on her. She was so young and a good person. She still had her whole life to live.”
The night of the fire, Lacroix was staying at an Airbnb. Her grandfather, Robert Lacas, said that she made urgent calls to 911, saying that there were no windows in her apartment and no way to get out of the fire before the call ended.
“The little girl was happy. All I can say is that. She was happy, “His voice broke as he said it. “She was a very nice person.”
An W
Friends and family of An Wu remember her as a hard-working scientist and a talented student.
Wu, who is 31 years old, was in Montreal to attend an academic conference about computational neuroscience. He was staying in an Airbnb in the building.
A friend named Pantong Yao says that she was born in China, was noticed as a smart child, and started college at age 19.
She was doing post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego, and would spend hours in the lab trying to find the answer to a question.
“An was a very hard-working person who really cared about science,” Yao told Wu’s family on behalf of Wu’s family member.
Nathan Sears 
Nathan Sears, an academic from Toronto with a PhD in political science, was in town for a conference at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel put on by the International Studies Association.
The International Studies Association held a conference in Montreal the week before the fire, and Sears was on the list of people who went. Steven Bernstein, who supervised Sears’ PhD thesis at the University of Toronto, wrote in an email, “We are all heartbroken.”
Camille Maheu
Camille Maheux had lived in the building for 30 years. She was a documentary photographer whose early 1970s work showed the women’s movement and the lives of LGBTQ people.
Buster Fraum, who used to live next door to her, said that Maheux was a colorful and friendly person who would tell him stories about her travels and work.
“Camille was very, very strange, but in the best way possible,” he said.
A friend said that Maheux’s work was shown in Canada, Europe, and Brazil, where she lived on and off in the 1980s. Maheux even had a show on CIBL, a French-language community radio station in Montreal, about Brazilian music.
On its website, the National Gallery of Canada says that it has 61 photographs by Maheux.Scènes de la rue, Montréal, Québecand Femme au bras tatoué.