LEVY: COVID warriors fought valiantly to defend rights of parents in 2020

Article content material

Over the previous 12 months I’ve written many tales of COVID warriors who fought for his or her proper to realize entry to their family members in long-term care and retirement houses throughout a lockdown that was unduly draconian.

These three stand out for his or her devotion to their mother and father, their refusal to take “no” for a solution, and their ongoing struggle in opposition to seniors houses whose officers far too usually abused their energy, utilizing well being and security directives to close out households on a whim.

All of them misplaced their family members throughout their struggle.

Veronica Gerber:

Veronica Gerber lobbied for months to get into the Scarborough long-term care dwelling the place she’d been an important caregiver for her mother Dorothea, 82, visiting each day previous to the COVID lockdown.

Dorothea was bedridden, wanted assist with feeding and suffered from dementia.

After the primary wave eased, the long-term care ministry’s imprecise directives and lack of oversight left the houses themselves to find out who might are available, even when isolation began to take its toll on many residents.

Article content material

Gerber acknowledged how a lot her mother had declined when she was allowed to go to in Could 2020 — however solely briefly as a result of Dorothea had been deemed palliative.

When her mother rallied, she despatched a lawyer’s letter to the house asking to be reinstated as “important caregiver.” When that went nowhere she turned to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

Final August, visits resumed however Gerber needed to schedule them and be accompanied to her mother’s room by a workers member.

Her mother handed away on Aug. 28, 2020 — three days earlier than the HRTO was to listen to her utility.

Some seven months later, Gerber stated she’s “dismayed” at how authorities officers who had been meant to safeguard the rights and freedoms of households and their family members in care “trampled them as a substitute.”

“The harms of LTC lockdown far outweigh no matter could have as soon as been thought-about useful,” she stated, including she believes houses saved households out as a result of they didn’t need them to “blow the whistle.”

Gerber stated she nonetheless misses her mother very a lot and all the time bear in mind her “smile” and her “method of seeing the intense facet,” however she’s glad Dorothea is “not on the mercy” of the federal government.

“My argument was not along with her PSWs however with conceited administration and a spineless authorities that held them (residents) captive in isolation underneath an ill-informed guise of security,” she stated.

Gail Sandler: 

I first spoke with Gail Sandler in late June 2020 after she’d lastly been allowed to go to her 100-year-old mother, Ann Jessel, in a tent exterior her Vaughan retirement dwelling.

Article content material

Sandler was upset with the ever-changing and inconsistent guidelines that banned her from her third go to as a result of she didn’t have a current sufficient detrimental COVID check.

A bit of over a month later, her mother was gone, succumbing technically from pneumonia however extra possible as a result of isolation and lack of mobility over 5 weeks. She would have been 101 on Sept. 22.

Final October, Sandler wrote me saying she feared for all seniors and households who had been about to face imprisonment and isolation for a second time.

She advised me her mother didn’t get COVID however COVID obtained her.

Once we spoke once more final week, it was at some point after her 79th birthday and the primary with out her momma on the retirement dwelling.

“I spotted I’d all the time have a good time with out her (any more),” she stated.

She discovered from her expertise along with her mother that it’s a must to be a “warrior” and a “fighter,” and “yell and scream,” and attain out to the media to get issues carried out as a result of the directives for visiting her mother had been “filled with holes.”

Sandler feels some “sense of aid” her mom is gone as a result of she wouldn’t have dealt with a second lockdown very properly.

Her fondest reminiscence along with her mother was their Friday evening dinners collectively on the retirement dwelling.

Cathy Parkes:

Cathy Parkes confronted the utmost of tragedies when her 86-year-old dad Paul died of COVID on April 15, 2020 — certainly one of 70 to be taken earlier than any households even realized how unhealthy the outbreak was at Pickering’s Orchard Villa.

Article content material

It was additionally one of many 5 Ontario houses the place Canadian navy — despatched in to assist — discovered appalling circumstances.

The household is engaged in a “mass torts” lawsuit with different households who misplaced family members at Orchard Villa.

Parkes advised me final week she final noticed her dad the day earlier than he died by way of his second-floor window however he was “comatose.”

She discovered he’d handed away in a cellphone name from the assistant director of care.

Of their lawsuit the household alleges they didn’t discover out Paul had COVID till three days after he died and so they acquired conflicting details about his situation over the six days he was sick.

(Orchard Villa govt director Jason Homosexual has stated they’ll reply to the declare in “due course” by way of their authorized course of however needed to deal with the care and security of residents throughout this “unprecedented time.”)

Parkes is now a part of a gaggle known as Canadians4LTC that advocates for nationwide requirements in long-term care.

She stated she travelled to Ottawa in November 2020 to have interaction in an indication and to foyer the PM’s workplace and different MPs from all events.

Now they’re concerned in a 10-part City Corridor sequence to advocate for a nationwide LTC plan adopted by a Day of Motion, hopefully in each province and territory, on April 27, she stated.

Almost a 12 months later, Parkes stated she has been so lively along with her advocacy that she hasn’t had time to course of her dad’s demise.

“I miss him terribly,” she stated. “He was all the time there … we had been so shut.”

At any time when she has comfortable ideas, the trauma of what he went by way of, particularly dying alone, hits her.

To pay tribute to their dad, she and her household have booked a cottage in Temagami, the place he all the time summered when he was younger.

SLevy@postmedia.com