Friends remember first victim identified in Old Montreal fire, Camille Maheux

It’s been a week since a deadly fire ravaged this building in Old Montreal. The work continues to recover the bodies of the missing.

The first victim officially identified – Camille Maheux – was a 76-year-old retired photographer who had been living in there for over 30 years. Her body was recovered on Sunday but identified Wednesday.

She is the first of what we know to be seven victims, police saying there could be more.

“A lot of people have little pieces of Camille, but the bulk of her work went with the fire,” said Suzanne Girard, a friend of Camille Maheux.

“It just it’s like somebody punched you in the chest. It was the first time it was because it was involving with the fire and hoping and hoping and searching and searching. We were sort of busy now. We weren’t busy. So is the reality you just don’t like a rock.”

Her decades-long friends are still trying to digest the news that Camille and much of her work are gone.

---

RELATED:

• A week since Old Montreal fire, second crane will be used to speed up search for bodies
• Loved ones of those renting Airbnbs in building ravaged by fatal fire searching for answers
• One dead, 6 missing as police search for victims of fire in Old Montreal

---

The Beauce region native created a legacy of art, with her photos in Canada’s National Gallery and several short films.

Though retired, she never really stopped capturing photos and creating social documentaries.

“She was a world woman, basically very extrovert, very out there, very aware of what her friends like, always bringing things, even if you didn’t want it. But she was always you know, she was a walker issued walk the streets of Montreal like all the time, you know, photographing,” said Girard.

But it’s her personality that many say they’ll miss.

“A lot of people went through her apartment. That was the type of woman she was and so on. And Brazilians and she met people she studied in Belgium in cinematography. She was a good camerawoman. She met people there from around the world. And that connection translated to somebody living in Brazil when come to Brazil, met people from Italy. So she traveled a lot.”

Renata Falzoni, another one of Maheux’s friends saying, “I am very, very, very pleased to have the chance to meet for me like 42 years ago. She opened me a lot of different ways to see the life. All, she is responsible for me not to be a feminist the way I am, but to see perspective, women perspective in this world in a different way.

“She’s the one that opened me this huge, huge, huge way of seeing life. She was radical. I am not this radical. She was. But this is interesting for you to learn, to see and to think about yourself. The way she transformed, the way I see my life today.”