Front Burner - Joyce Echaquan’s final days: A fuller picture

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Last year, a video of Atikamekw woman Joyce Echaquan being taunted by nursing staff in a Quebec hospital, shortly before she died, sparked global outrage. Now, a dramatic coroner’s inquest is shedding more light on what happened — and why generations of Atikamekw people have feared that hospital.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Yesterday on the show, we talked about the horrifying discovery of what are believed to be the remains of potentially more than 200 Indigenous children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. And for so many people, this discovery is not only an incredibly painful reminder of the recent past, the violence and trauma that the residential school system

inflicted on generations of Indigenous children. It's also a reminder of the present, that the same colonial system that built those schools is still shaping how Canadian institutions treat Indigenous people now. Today, we want to talk about one example of that, the inquest into the death of Joyce Echaquan, an Atikamekw woman in Quebec. And I want to warn people that this story and some of the audio is also very disturbing, So please take care. The Facebook live video that Joyce Echaquan filmed shortly before she died last September 28th was seen around the world. She's in a hospital in Joliet, Quebec,

and you can hear her screaming in pain and crying out for help as a nurse and an orderly mock her and shout racist insults at her. The video prompted a reckoning in Quebec about the systemic discrimination facing Indigenous people in the health care system. Now three weeks of dramatic testimony at a coroner's inquest is shedding more light on the days and hours leading up to Joyce Echaquan's death. I'm speaking to CBC Quebec City reporter Julia Page. She's been in Toile Rivière for the past three weeks covering the inquest. Hi, Julia. Thank you for being with me today. Hi, Jamie.

So before we get into the story of how Joyce Ashokwan died, I first want to ask you about her life. Family members have spoken during this coroner's inquest about who Joyce was as a person. And can you tell me about how they described her? Well, first off, she was 37 years old. She was the mother of seven children. And Carole Zubé was her husband. He described his wife as a friendly and kind woman. He says, you know, we lived a very simple life at home, but we loved nature.

We loved going out on the land. And he says she had so much love for her children. She prayed for them a lot. She was a very faithful woman. And they had been together for 23 years. So they were really, you know, high school sweethearts almost. And he says early on, he told her, you know, I will tell you every single day that I love you. And Zubay says he did that for those 23 years. And her eldest daughter also spoke during this inquiry. She says she was the kind of mother who showed up unexpected, who brought cake and gifts kind of as a surprise out of the blue at birthdays, but also just any old day of the week. And she says she often goes back to see videos, to listen to messages she has on her phone

just to hear her voice. Wow, those are some really beautiful tributes from her family. Her husband speaking publicly. I am convinced that my partner died because systemic racism contaminated Joliette Hospital. It killed my partner. Joyce's Facebook live video showed a nurse and an orderly mocking her and shouting racist insults at her. It was really, really shocking to watch. They tell her she'd be better off dead, that she's, quote, stupid as hell. That she's only good for sex. That she made poor choices, seemingly insinuating that she was using drugs.

But the video is just seven minutes long. And at the inquest, other patients and visitors who were in the hospital painted a fuller picture of the way staff were speaking about Joyce in the hours before and after that video was taken. And what do we learn from the inquest? What did they say they saw? Well, there were so many conflicting testimony. So many patients say they heard racist comments from staff. And every single time that a staff member was confronted with those allegations, they denied it and they denied ever having heard their own colleagues saying anything similar. Now, Annie Desroches, she was particularly emotional during

her testimony. She was a patient at the Joliette Hospital and she was lying right beside Joyce Echaquan on the morning of September 28, 2020, when the morning she died. And Desroches, that morning, you know, Joyce was very calm. She was chatting on her phone. And she offered her phone to Derosh at one point. And she says, you know, Echaquan was just so nice and kind to me that day. But later on that morning, around 10.15 a.m., Echaquan started screaming out in pain.

And Annie Derosh says immediately, the nurses were very impatient. They were telling her to calm down. And one nurse at one point reportedly said, we're just going to shoot you up with painkillers and you'll sleep like a rock. Annie Desroches was very disturbed by what she was hearing. And she says, you know, when you're a nurse, you're supposed to protect and comfort patients to make them feel better. And again, the nurse in question denied having ever said this during her testimony. We also heard from other patients who were in the ER that day. Josiane Ulrich was there with her child, and she told investigators that she heard a staff member saying later on that day, after Joyce had passed,

well, good, we'll finally have some peace. She's dead. Now, again, no one has admitted to having said that. But that is such a shocking, shocking piece of testimony. And you could kind of feel the air in the courtroom. Just everything stopped at that moment because that was arguably one of the most difficult things we heard. Another visitor who was there that day, Stéphane Guilbeault, he was also visiting her daughter, his daughter at the hospital. And he gave a statement to the inquiry saying that he overheard someone say, well, you know, Indians only like to complain and screw around and have children. And that's what they're good for.

And that, I have to say, is a comment that had been reported by more than one person over the course of this inquiry. So those are the kind of snippets that we were hearing here and there, and that none of the staff workers admitted to and denied having ever said. The senior nurse in the video, whom I mentioned before, the one who said most of the abusive comments, her name is protected by a publication ban, but she was fired soon after Joyce died. And I understand that the day she testified in the inquest was particularly intense. And can you tell me about that day? What did the family ask her to do? And how did she respond? Well, I'd actually like to bring you back to the previous day when we heard from the other person who was in the video. So the orderly, she told Echaquan,

what would your children think about seeing you like this and told her you made bad choices, again, implying that she had abused drugs. Now she says this is the kind of thing she says to patients to kind of snap them out of a crisis or kind of to bring them back to reality. Now the coroner Jeanne Camel did not appreciate that response and she asked at that specific moment that the video be played in the courtroom to confront that witness and at this point this was the very first time we were watching the video in the courtroom and we watched Joyce crying out for help crying out for her husband to come get her in a ticamec in her language the family was sobbing.

They were holding on to one another. And I think most people in the room had to push back tears. I certainly was. And the orderly did not react at this point. Even when it was over, she still insisted she meant no harm by her comments. And that's when I want to bring you back to the next day when it was the nurse's turn to testify. She was much more emotional during her testimony. She asked for the family's forgiveness several times. She said, you know, I got angry that day. I never get angry. I've always been nice with my patients.

And she said repeatedly that she was just fed up with all the workload she had. And this is when the family's lawyer stood up and said, the family would like us to watch the video once again in your presence. And so despite the pain that they had sat through the previous time, they really wanted her to see it again. And when it was done, she said, well, you know, I admit it is appalling. I can't even watch it. And she did end up saying, you know, the patient didn't deserve that. But her testimony really brought on more frustrating elements than anything else on the care that Joyce received that day.

So this coroner's inquest has tried to get to the bottom of two main issues, right? The first, as we just talked about, is the discrimination that Joyce faced at the hospital. But the second is whether the medical treatment she received there before she died was adequate. And so tell me more about that. So that morning, so as Annie de Roche was telling us, Joyce was very calm. She was, you know, chatting with her family. But around 10, 15 a.m. that morning, she became very agitated. She actually was at one point kneeling on her hospital bed. She was in the hallway at this point and she was banging against the wall. And that's when the nurses intervened. And after she fell down on the ground, she was actually given powerful sedatives.

So at first she was already taking morphine. And at that point, the doctor prescribed Haldol. And experts say the amounts of Haldol and morphine she was taking at the time were appropriate for her age. But Haldol is a very powerful sedative. And after around 30 minutes, normally patients basically fall asleep. And at that point, she was also placed under restraints. So her feet, her hands, and her torso were tied to the bed. And this was very disturbing for her daughter.

When she testified, she really talked about that a lot. Workers say it does happen. This is something that is done when a person is under sedative to make sure they don't fall. And several people testified that Ishaqwan had actually asked to be tied up that morning. And the crucial point following this, and really what is central to what happened to Joyce, is that she wasn't properly supervised. Now, normally under the protocol, someone on those sedatives requires constant monitoring. So you need someone there full time

to check the heart levels and to really have a pair of eyes on the patient, basically. And that morning, there were so few employees on the floor. And the nurse who was filmed in that video, immediately after Joyce was tied down, given the sedatives, after that video was filmed, so after she had said all those things, she went to lunch. And so Joyce was put under restraints and she was left alone in a private room. Now, this left only one young nursing candidate on the floor. She was 21 years old. She had just a few months of experience. But on top of her five patients she had under her care, she was also given the patients that the other nurse had. And she simply couldn't get to Joyce. And she called repeatedly asking for backup. repeatedly asking for backup. Now, we know now that Joyce was eventually left alone for 40 minutes and she went into cardiac arrest, brought on by pulmonary edema. Dr. Alain Vadeboncure is an emergency physician at the Montreal Heart Institute. He testified last week to give his expertise on the cause of death. Basically, what that condition is, it's when your

lungs are filling up with liquid. And he says that could have been detected earlier if Joyce Eshakwan had been properly monitored. And he says the fact that she was tied down to her bed maybe accelerated the problem because if she had been sitting up, the problem would have come on so quickly. He says she was likely also given too many liquids over the previous hours because she wasn't properly diagnosed. So basically all those different actions that were taking that day led to her death. And it was confirmed at 1244 on September 28th, after the staff tried to reanimate her for 45 minutes. Wow. So this medical expert is, he was essentially testifying that Joyce Eshaquan could have been saved. That's what he said. Most of the things that could have happened could have been treated. And at some point, we could have get her back to life instead of getting letter to die.

And that was a question that the family had been waiting for since the very beginning of this inquiry, and it's something that their lawyer said it was a burning question for them. Could she have been saved? Wow. Julia, it is really difficult to listen to you talk about all of this. The inquiry has heard that Joyce had a number of chronic health issues, diabetes and serious heart issue, blood pressure problems, and that she went to the hospital two days before her death because she was having stomach pain and sometimes vomiting blood. I know that Joyce's husband said that she really hadn't wanted to go to the hospital,

that she had put it off until the pain was basically unbearable. And what were some of the previous experiences that caused her to be so afraid of the Joliet Hospital? In recent years before her death, Carole Dubé told us that his wife had had three miscarriages, actually, which all had to be carried out at the Joliette Hospital. And he says at the time they asked for the fetuses because they say under their traditions,

they wanted to bury the fetuses in Manawan, in their hometown. And he says that was refused. And he says that was something that Joyce really carried with her a long time. It was something she was having a hard time accepting. And then in 2019, when she gave birth to their last child, Carol Junior, he says she was very depressed because after the baby was born, she was told you should really get your tubes tied. You should get an operation to no longer have any children.

And he says that's not what she wanted. He says she wanted more children. He says she loved children so much. And of course, this is something that we have heard from Indigenous women across Canada being pressured by the health care system to have the operation, even though they don't want it. Julia, is there a sense that this racism that Joyce Ashaquan faced at this hospital was an isolated incident or was this part of a more systemic problem? of a more systemic problem. I think by now it would be very hard for the administrators of that hospital

to continue calling it an isolated incident, which is what broadly happened in the first place when she first... In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. But the Joliette Hospital had been subject of complaints by Atikamekw people for years, including in the Viennese report, which is the provincial inquiry that was held in 2019, looking into the government's relations with Indigenous people. And some of the recommendations that came out

of that inquiry were actually being implemented. So we did hear from the former CEO of the health board who testified last Friday, and he did give examples of how he was following up on those recommendations. But if we take a step back and really think about all the testimony we heard during either this inquiry or the previous inquiries, it was clear that for Atikamekw people, there was a real danger of going to the Joliet Hospital. And this goes back to, of course, generational trauma from several decades in the past. Right. I understand there's another historic reason that's come to light in the past few years about why many Atikamekw people and other Indigenous people in Quebec may not have a lot of trust in hospitals, including this specific hospital in Juliet. And can you tell me a little bit about that? Well, what we have also learned through these different inquiries

is that in Quebec, what happened often, it was that Indigenous children were taken from their homes, sent to hospital, and never returned. So this happened mainly during the 1960s and 70s. The federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls dedicated a large portion of its report specifically on this question in Quebec. Kamek First Nation, from the Algonquin Nation, told the inquiry that their child was sent away from their community for medical care and would never came back. Now in some cases, death certificates were never provided, the bodies were never returned, and in many cases, families were left wondering if the child had died in the first place. Baby Pierrette, born in 1964,

bounced through hospitals, pronounced dead at two years old by a priest the family believes may have sold her. Baby Alice, born in the early 1950s, taken to another room and pronounced dead. Her casket, sent home, screwed shut. Or baby Boivin, born in 1952, pronounced dead despite crying at birth. And so, so many others. And that's also what happened to so many Atikamekw families and so many from Manawan. Right, and of course, as you mentioned, Manawan is Joyce Ashaquan's community. It's her community and it's one of the places we've heard the most stories

coming from about these missing children. And for Joyce Echaquan, it wasn't only from her community, it was within her family because a baby that would have been her cousin disappeared in 1973. Now, her name was Loreana Echaquan. And Loreana's father was actually outside the courtroom during this whole investigation. And he accepted to speak with me yesterday. Now, he's 80 years old, but he still remembers quite well exactly what happened when Loreana disappeared. She was taken to the hospital in Joliette in 1973, and a few months later, the family was called to say that Loreana had died. But when Armand Chacouin went to the Joliette hospital to pick up her body, he says it wasn't the right child.

He says even now he's convinced that it wasn't Loreana. He says she was much too old. And he says despite that, he still wanted to give this child a proper burial, but was not allowed to bury her in the cemetery. He wasn't allowed to bring her back to Manawan. And she ended up being buried in a cornfield, which is now actually a soccer pitch near a housing development. And Armand Echaquan told me, you know, they're

grieving over the fact there's no burial plot. They're also grieving over the fact that they believe that Loreana may still be out there. And he says he's still looking for her and he'll never stop looking for her. And all their stories that were reported during these inquiries and that they shared with reporters over the years did lead to change. There's a bill being passed right now at Quebec's National Assembly, Bill 79, that will allow families to access more information from public institutions to track down that info on what happened to their child. So this is really something that the families are holding on to, to try to figure out exactly what happened.

Province says they know they have to rebuild that trust with First Nations people. What happened to Joyce Echaquan is an example of that. The province will invest $15 million into sensitizing health care staff about First Nations culture and their specific needs. This is one announcement, this is not the last one I'm telling you. Speaking of the Echaquan family family this inquiry wraps up on wednesday and i i'm wondering what justice for joyce looks like for her family now a coroner's inquest doesn't determine guilt or lay blame it's it's simply to get to the bottom of what happened and make recommendations

the family wanted to see criminal charges laid, but a police investigation last year didn't lead to any. After sitting through weeks of a very emotional, heart-wrenching testimony that just laid bare so many new layers of this story, what would her family like to see happen now? Well, from the very beginning of this inquiry, and even in the days after Joyce's death, her family said their hope and their goal is really to make sure this never happens again. And the family has been very dignified during this whole process. Every single day, they're listening attentively to the testimony in the courtroom. Every single day, they're listening attentively to the testimony in the courtroom.

Carole Echaquan, he shows up every single day with a purple shirt and a purple tie, which was Joyce's favorite color. She loved lilacs. So it's really become a symbol of the whole movement that is Justice for Joyce. And one thing that stood out for me is a moment when that young nursing candidate who was left alone to care for those nine patients in an ER room with only a few months experience, and she wasn't able to properly attend to Joyce. And during her testimony, the family asked the lawyer to give her a message, and they wanted her to know that they forgave her, that they didn't want her to carry all this weight on her shoulders. And I think that that really speaks to their

spirit through all this. They want justice for Joyce. That doesn't necessarily mean condemnation or revenge, but it's really concrete change they're looking for to make sure that she didn't die for nothing and that she didn't take out her phone that day and film her final moments, which were excruciating for nothing. Julia, thank you very much for listening to FrontBurner. Talk tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.