Joyce Echaquan is neither the first nor the last to have been the victim of racism at the Joliette hospital. The duty spoke to three Indigenous women in Manawan who claim to have suffered abuse because of their origin, both before and after Ms.me Echaquan.
The most recent cases reported to Duty reportedly occurred in October and early March. The other goes back more than seven years. These three cases are in addition to that of Jocelyne Ottawa, who denounced the behavior of two nurses from the CLSC de Joliette who received her on March 12.
Sitting on her couch, under a wooden eagle sculpture, Pauline Dubé is nervous. His hands shake as he recalls painful memories. She takes an eagle feather, a symbol of truth, and gently strokes it up and down. This gesture soothes him.
It was in 2014. Pauline Dubé was teaching visual arts at the Manawan school when she started to feel “weird”. The Atikamekw woman was confused, her right arm was numb and speechless.
She says she went to the emergency room at Joliette hospital, but was reportedly sent home telling her that she had nothing. “The more it went, the more I lost my abilities,” she recalls.
A few days later, she reportedly went to the CLSC in Saint-Michel-des-Saints, where a doctor wrote her a prescription for a magnetic resonance test to see if she was having a stroke.
She was so mean. It was racism. And she said that in front of everyone in the emergency room.
When she returned to the hospital on June 25, she claimed that a doctor had insulted her. “She started telling me that I was nothing but a drug addict and an alcoholic. I don’t remember everything she said to me. She was so mean. It was racism. And she said that in front of everyone in the emergency room. It was so hurtful. “
Mme Dubé says she was “embarrassed” and “angry” by what she heard. She cried. She was looking for words to defend herself, but she couldn’t speak. “There was another patient who had tears in her eyes hearing how she treated me,” she recalls.
Deep confusion
When tests revealed she had suffered a stroke, the doctor’s tone changed, she says. Suddenly she would have become nice and wanted to help him. But Pauline Dubé did not see her again afterwards: another doctor would have taken charge of her. The Atikamekw woman does not know why, but she presumes it is because of what the doctor said earlier.
Pauline Dubé was in rehabilitation for a year following her stroke. She had to relearn how to speak, write and count. “My daughter brought me books, I read syllable by syllable like a child,” she says. We were laughing, but it wasn’t funny. “
Her daughter vividly remembers her mother’s distress during her hospitalization in Joliette. She did not attend the exchanges between the doctor and her mother, but she says her mother called her for help when she received the test results. It was there that she told him how she had been treated. “She was confused,” recalls Marie-Josée Bellerose. She did not understand what was happening and she had a hard time explaining what had happened, given her condition. “
There was another patient who had tears in her eyes when she heard how she treated me
During his stay in the hospital, Mr.me Bellerose heard the doctor apologize to her mother. “She was trying to come back to what she said. That’s when I realized my mom had really been told that, ”she says.
Pauline Dubé considered filing a complaint for racism. She claims to have taken steps with the Lanaudière Complaints Assistance and Support Center. She wrote a letter, but abandoned the process along the way because she did not have the strength to continue. “I was in such bad shape, I was tired, I didn’t have the energy for it,” she says.
Years later, when she saw the treatment of her distant cousin, Joyce Echaquan, it reminded her of what she had been through and she thought “it could have been worse”.
She regrets today not to have continued the steps to file a complaint. For her. For the others. So that things can change. “But at least I’m talking now. Everyone will listen to my story, ”she hopes.
Feeling of helplessness
Pauline Dubé is not the only one who wants to speak out, to denounce. The story of Joyce Echaquan, then of Jocelyne Ottawa in recent days, has untied the tongues.
When her 17-month-old daughter suffered a head injury on October 8, Shannon Blacksmith hesitated to take her to Joliette hospital. It had been barely two weeks since Joyce Echaquan died there, fueling the fears of the Atikamekw of Manawan who have long claimed to be racist there. ” I was scared [d’aller à Joliette], she said in a telephone interview with The duty. When we were in the car, I wondered which direction I was going to take, I wondered if I was going to another hospital, but my daughter’s case was serious, and it was the Joliette hospital that was the closer, so I had no choice. I was trying to convince myself that the staff were professional. “
Hours later, desperate and in tears with her baby in her arms, she realized that her expectations might have been too high. “I felt helpless, inferior compared to them,” she says.
The problems started when Mme Blacksmith presented to the emergency room. As she suffers from anxiety disorders, she asked that her husband be able to accompany her, especially since it was he who had gone to pick up her daughter from daycare and who knew the circumstances of the accident. Security guards told him it was not allowed due to COVID rules.
Hours later, when her daughter was released from the hospital, Shannon Blacksmith did not know how to reach her husband to come pick her up. She asked an administrative agent to give her the telephone number of the Native Friendship Center of Lanaudière and the Elizabeth Home, two places where her husband could be. “I was told: ‘You could have written it down somewhere before you landed here,’” says the teacher.
“At that point, I was restraining myself from crying in front of the woman,” she explains. I said politely, “Thank you anyway for your help.” I was so stressed that I had to get some fresh air. It was windy, it was cold. I was in great pain. “
She was all the more distraught as she did not come from the region: she grew up in Mashteuiatsh, near Roberval, in Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean, before moving with her partner to Manawan. She therefore knew very little of the city of Joliette, where she was left to her own devices with a 17-month-old child in her arms.
It was ultimately a patient who witnessed the scene who came to her aid. “She said to me, ‘They had no right to leave you in distress like this,’” says Shannon Blacksmith. Soon after, to her relief, her partner arrived.
Back home, Shannon Blacksmith filed a formal complaint at the hospital. A month later, she received a response from Diane Rochon, Assistant Service Quality and Complaints Commissioner, who admitted that the staff had lacked compassion.
In his report, that The duty was able to consult, the commissioner writes that the security agents should have taken into account Mr.me Blacksmith, who was experiencing great anxiety, to allow her to be accompanied by her husband.
As for the administrative officer, who had refused to give him telephone numbers, she was “newly in post”, writes the commissioner. “She confirmed to me, after reflection, that she did not help you as she should have,” she adds. A simple internet search would have enabled him to find the phone number easily. The administrative agent has asked me to send you her apologies and is committed to providing assistance to any user in such a situation in the future. “
Worried dead
Just recently, on March 3, 2021, Maybelline Ottawa, a mother from Manawan, went to the emergency department of the Joliette hospital. A motorist hit his 13-year-old son Liam and his friends. The children were transported by ambulance and Mr.me Ottawa followed them by car.
When she arrived, she went to the emergency room and asked to see her son. She says she was worried to death. “The receptionist didn’t even let me in to see my boy,” laments the lady in the interview. I had the right to go see my son, he is a minor! “
According to her, she was refused access because she is indigenous. “There is another lady who came after me and she had the right to go, her, but not me. “
The new cultural security officer, Sophie Ottawa, hired by the Joliette hospital since the death of Joyce Echaquan, arrived shortly after. She had been told that young people from the community had arrived by ambulance and went to see them. Her own niece was among the wounded, she tells in an interview with the Duty.
She remembers going to Maybelline Ottawa, then the receptionist, telling the receptionist that the mother needed to see her underage son. His request was granted. “I still have a little bit of power,” she says, smirking.
In his opinion, it was more because of the COVID protocols that he was initially denied access. Still, it took his intervention for Maybelline Ottawa to see his son in the emergency room.
Maybelline Ottawa is considering filing a complaint. “But I don’t know how to do it,” she said bluntly. However, she knows that she does not want to set foot in this hospital again. “Because they don’t like Native people,” she says.
The duty informed the CISSS de Lanaudière of the cases reported in this article. “Due to the confidentiality of all user files, we cannot comment on specific situations,” said spokesperson Pascale Lamy.
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