PEOPLE, PETS AND A PLANE
Chartered aircraft from Cayman Islands helps Canadian dog and cat owners stay behind in the Caribbean nation long enough to get their faithful companions safely back home
It was dubbed the Noah’s Ark Project. The mission: getting Canadians and their pets home from the Cayman Islands. And getting pets left behind home to their owners.
Canadians were faced with a heartbreaking choice: get on a repatriation flight without their pets or miss the flight home.
“We were really stressed to see no flights available after that. There was a lot of fear and anxiety,” says Nikole Poirier, a Canadian living in the Cayman Islands. “It was really horrible,” she says of the choice they were forced to make.
“Many Canadians chose to stay, because they refused to leave their pets behind,” says Poirier.
When COVID -19 was declared a pandemic, tourists and foreigners were given four days to pack up and get off the island.
The strict lockdown and government quarantine facilities resulted in few community transmissions of the virus and no Caymanian deaths.
Canadians were given 48 hours’ notice that the repatriation flight would be sent to bring them home. Poirier and many others stayed with their pets. Others left their pets in the care of friends.
“Packing up a household is not that easy,” says Poirier, who moved to the Cayman Islands six months ago to start a business.
Poirier, who owns a home in Haida Gwaii, worked for Parks Canada developing programs for the public to better enjoy the parks. She saw the opportunity to bring the Parks Canada model of public education to the Cayman Islands to help the coral reef ecology.
Poirier searched for another solution; another way to get home. She called the Canadian Consulate and they suggested she charter a private plane.
“I’m really happy with the consulate,” Poirier says.
“I’m a marine biologist, not a travel agent. I could not have done this without them.”
The cost of chartering the plane was $140,000. Poirier turned to social media to raise the money and find Canadians who wanted to go home.
Kurt Klischuk, who had been living in the Cayman Islands for six years, saw her post in a Facebook Group called the Canada Club of Cayman.
To Klischuk it was a relief. His wife and daughter were able to get on the last Westjet flight out of the Caymans, but he and the family German shepherd, Ike, and their cat Oreo were not.
“I spent a month away from them … there was an incredible amount of anxiety,” Klischuk says. To him Poirier is a hero.
“I just can’t imagine how much work she put in organizing things.”
“The airport was a zoo,” Poirier says with a smile. They were able to charter a 737 plane with Sunwing to fly 92 Canadians, as well as 27 pets to Toronto on May 22.
Klischuk didn’t know what to expect from Ike, one of the biggest dogs, at 70 pounds, on the flight. “It was highly unusual … there was a dog in our row and a dog behind us in the cabin,” says Klischuk, who was worried about Ike’s dominant personality.
However shortly after take off, Ike went to sleep and slept all of the four-hour flight.
He is now home on the Sunshine Coast, where he has a beachfront property for Ike to play on. “He spent a lot of time in air conditioning in the Cayman …. in B.C. he gets to be outside and he’s loving it,” Klischuk says.
Poirier says the unsung hero of it all is Aimee McKie of Must Love Dogs.
“She was crucial in putting things together. Hand delivering documents, assisted with vet export permits, Department of Agriculture approval, and making sure all the animals had pee pads and muzzles for the flight. I heard one of the Sunwing flight attendants say, ‘It was one of the funnest flights’ she’s ever worked,” Klischuk says.
Poirier, who has two rescue kittens, one from the Rockies and the other from Haida Gwaii, says she stayed behind “so I can organize another flight. In the last days, before the first flight I received 40 messages from folks looking to be on that flight. I couldn’t add any last-minute guests, due to the nature of it being a private charter. So I decided to stay and organize another flight."
Since then Poirier has received more than 300 emails and lots of calls from others who weren’t able to get on the flight. So there is a Noah’s Ark Project 2 flight being planned for July.
“I hope to be coming home on this one,” Poirier says. “We do need to raise funds to get this next plane off the ground!”