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Eva Barami travelled 6,000 kilometres from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to come to Montreal to attend the ceremony in Côte-St-Luc Monday to honour her friend Alexandre Look. The city of Côte-St-Luc organized the event Monday to name a green space in honour of Look. It is right beside Bialik High School, his alma mater. It will be called Alexandre Look Place and it features two plaques, one describing Look’s life and the other detailing the events of last Oct. 7 in Israel.
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“He was a legend,” said Barami. “He was a protector. Every time Alex was beside you, you felt safe. He was the happiest guy. He loved to party with his friends.”
Look, who grew up in Côte-St-Luc, was murdered in the attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7. He had been at the Supernova music festival in the Negev desert in southern Israel where close to 400 people were killed that day. He and some of his friends ran to take shelter at a bomb shelter nearby at the kibbutz Be’eri and when the Hamas militants arrived there, he was killed.
Look had been living in Cabo San Lucas for the past few years and he would visit Israel every summer. He had extended his stay in Israel last year in order to attend the trance-music festival.
Barami, who is from Israel, lives in Cabo San Lucas, which is where she met Look. He ran cosmetics stores there.
“He was a superhero,” said Barami. “He was an incredible guy. He was the most loyal friend I ever met. He was crazy but kind.”
“He’d light up the room like a torch,” said Roy Levi, who came from Israel for the ceremony. “He left a mark on everyone he met.”
Levi also met Look in Cabo San Lucas.
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“He always watched your back,” said Barami. “The legacy he left us is to live our lives to the fullest. Like it’s the last day. He was very brave.”
Barami said Look was guarding the entrance to the bomb shelter when they shot him. She said he saved six or seven lives that day.
“He spoke to them in Arabic”, said Barami, saying he was trying to negotiate with the Hamas militants. “He was the best salesman ever, so he tried.”
“The way he lived was the way he died, with this positivity,” said Samuel Elimeleh, who grew up with him in Côte-St-Luc and knew him since he was three years old. “He thought he could talk them out of this because that’s the way he lived. There’s no words to describe him. He was the smartest person around. He was the most pure person that anybody could meet. He was one of a kind. He was everything that is good. Whenever anything is bad, you go to Alex. That’s why I say God takes the best ones first.”
The three were in a total state of shock when they learned he’d been killed last October. They just couldn’t believe it.
“I saw his grave and I still thought, maybe he’d come out and say ‘Hi I’m here, it’s just a joke’,” said Barami.
“He’s a troublemaker, you can have a lot of fun with him but he has the biggest heart,” added Barami. “And it will always be an adventure when you go out with him. You don’t know how you will end the day. But if something happens to you, you know he’ll be the first guy who’ll be there for you.”
A number of people spoke at the ceremony Monday, including Look’s mother Raquel Ohnona Look, Côte-St-Luc mayor Mitchell Brownstein, the MNA for D’Arcy-McGee Elisabeth Prass, Rabbi Reuben Poupko from the Congregation Beth Israel Beth Aaron and Federation CJA President Yair Szlak.
“This park in the very community where Alex grew up, next to the shul which Alex attended, where we spent so many shabbats … next to the school where Alex attended, this place that will bear Alex’s name will serve as a beacon of hope and remembrance,” said Ohnona Look.
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