This entire family died of suspected overdoses.
Those left say parents with addictions need more support
In a 6-month span, a 16-month-old baby and both her parents died
of suspected drug toxicity
Anne Doig looks at three smiling faces on the funeral handouts in her lap — one much younger than the others.
A toddler in a Christmas onesie sits on a bed, propped up by pillows. The words "Madison Lily Cowan. August 6, 2021 — January 1, 2023" are printed in pink letters.
Madison's parents, John Cowan and Berkeley Donkervoort, both 38, died months after their only child.
All three are suspected to have died of toxic drug poisoning, also called an overdose.
From the moment Madison was born, Doig worried the girl would struggle, given her parents' addictions.
"It's a dreadful thing to think, but absent of a very powerful intervention sustained over a long period of time, that little girl's hope of anything resembling a normal life was fraught," she said.
Doig and other family members want to see better support for parents living with addictions, and better protections for their children.
Years of addiction, calls for help
Doig says her son, John, was a "sunny and optimistic person." He studied pipe fitting in Alberta, but a head injury sustained in a car crash affected his ability to continue his career.
Berkeley was a dental hygienist who had "the biggest laugh," according to her mother, Susan Donkervoort. She believed Berkeley used fentanyl for eight years before she died.
John and Berkeley started dating in 2015, then got pregnant around Christmas 2020. Doig says Berkeley didn't get prenatal care until her third trimester, despite family encouragement.
She and Donkervoort believe Berkeley used drugs during her pregnancy.
Both grandmothers say they called Saskatoon police and Saskatchewan child protective services several times. They expressed concerns about the couple's drug use, as well as the fact the family was living with a person they say was a known drug dealer.
A social worker who checked in on the family would book visits in advance, Doig says, giving John and Berkeley lots of time to clean up and "cover their tracks."
She staged an intervention in December 2022 to get the parents help, but weeks later, Madison died.
Madison's death
According to Doig, John told her that Berkeley called him at work on New Year's Day. Madison was sick — vomitting — and she needed him to come home.
Instead of calling 911, Doig says someone who knew the family drove Berkeley and Madison to the hospital where staff tried to revive the baby. But she was gone.
Doig says documents from the Saskatchewan Coroners Service show Madison died with fentanyl, carfentanil and benzodiazepines in her stomach. She believes the baby somehow ingested the drugs.
"We got through the funeral," she said.
"John did a fabulous job. He was able to stand at the doorway and greet every single person."
Both parents died with drugs in system
But just weeks later, on Feb. 6, John died.
According to Doig, he had taken someone's quetiapine, a drug used to treat psychotic disorders or as a sedative for people with addictions.
"It was in his system along with the street stuff he was using," which Doig said included fentanyl, methamphetamine and benzodiazepines, according to coroner documents.
Berkeley died on June 21.
Donkervoort received coroner documents stating her daughter had fentanyl and benzodiazepines in her system when she died.
She said not even losing Madison and John was enough for her daughter to seek help.
"I was actually hoping that she might have been charged with something so she could get help in jail."
Saskatoon police investigated the deaths, then handed them over to the Saskatchewan Coroners Service.
A spokesperson for Saskatchewan's ministry of social services says the department investigates serious incidents that happen to children in care or who receive social services.
The coroner, which is privy to those investigations, could choose to hold an inquest into the deaths, something Doig says she'd support if it fosters change and protects others.
Protecting children
Doig, a recently retired family physician of 40 years, says the deaths are tragic for her family, but preventable for others.
"You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, but I think the rules change when there's a baby involved," she said.
While she doesn't think Madison should have been taken away, Doig says the current system isn't working.
"What I wanted was support for those parents, but I don't know what support looked like."
Each family and situation is different, according to Dr. Peter Selby, an addictions health specialist with the University of Toronto and the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health.
"Just because that person has an active addiction doesn't mean they have to lose custody over that child forever. But it can mean there are other people who are brought in to make sure that child is raised safely."
That could look like, for example, finding responsible child care for when parents are using.
It's when parents aren't able to provide the necessities of life that Selby believes agencies should step in, providing help that keeps the best interests of the child at heart.
"The good thing is with substance use, it's reversible, so people can get better. I've seen that happen many times," he said.
He says when children are apprehended from mothers who use drugs, it reinforces stigmas and the idea that they're bad mothers. Instead, he says we need to reexamine how we deliver addiction support to pregnant women who need it.
"You need a village around this," said Selby, who helped create an existing support network at St. Joseph's Health Centre in Toronto. He notes that it often involves the housing sector, health care, child protection and the legal system working to keep families together.
"If we don't put that investment in now, I feel we're going to lose out on a whole generation."
Why worry about stigma when people are dying? A 16-month-old child and both parents. Why would you want to keep the family together? You are just endangering the children. Why are you afraid of letting a parent know that they are a bad parent, when they quite obviously are. Any parent who is addicted to drugs should not be allowed to have children in their home. Any good parent would make sure that their children are not ever exposed to drugs in the home, and that includes marijuana edibles.
Kids and Drugs > Surge in sick kids after pot legalized in NY
Staggering mental health, addiction stats push northern First Nations to call for emergency declaration
Band members 6 times more likely to be hospitalized for mental health,
addictions than rest of Ontario
Chiefs of First Nations in northern Ontario are calling for a public emergency and social crisis to be declared, emphasizing the disproportionate mental health and addictions issues facing their communities compared to the rest of the province.
The Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority's (SLFNHA) held its two-day annual general meeting last week. It serves 33 First Nations — 28 of them are considered remote as they have no highway access.
Those who attended the meeting in Thunder Bay heard jarring preliminary figures from a report on mental health and substance use that's underway in the communities. The figures show band members are hospitalized for mental health and addictions issues at six times the provincial rate.
From 2011 to 2021, emergency department visits for intentional self-injury nearly doubled and ambulatory visits in the communities tripled.
Chiefs at the meeting passed a resolution to direct the SLFNHA to:
- Develop a media and advocacy strategy based on the mental health and substance use report.
- Develop a joint task force by March 2024.
- Seek funding from Indigenous Services Canada to host a mental health forum.
- Call on the Ontario and federal governments to implement several solutions, from resource allocation to policy changes, and an agreement from the solicitor general to respond to the crisis.
'Each number is a person'
The steering committee involved in SLFNHA's mental health report has been listening to stories from community members to integrate Indigenous knowledge into its findings, Dr. Lloyd Douglas, SLFNHA's public health physician, told CBC News.
"When you hear the storytellers sharing their experiences, you quickly realize that each statistic, each number, is a person, is a mom, is a dad, is an aunt, an uncle, a cousin," Douglas said. "This is not something that's historical — this is extremely current."
While much of the data gathered goes up to 2021, he suspects the numbers have worsened since then.
Each statistic, each number, is a person, is a mom, is a dad, is an aunt, an uncle, a cousin.- Dr. Lloyd Douglas, public health physician with SLFNHA
It's hoped the final report will be completed by November, in time to be presented at a special meeting of chiefs. The goal of the report is to provide First Nations people with quantitative evidence that can be used to push for more resources.
"It will validate their stories," Douglas said. "Their voices will be amplified through this report."
Investments, initiatives in Sioux Lookout
Several new projects have been implemented in Sioux Lookout, which acts as a hub for surrounding First Nations to access health care and social services to meet people's mental health and addictions needs.
These include the opening of safe rooms at the Meno Ya Win Health Centre, a new walk-in addictions clinic at both the hospital and emergency shelter, and new supportive treatment beds. SLFNHA also purchased a third hostel this spring to help accommodate some of the thousands of people who go to the town for medical appointments.
"From the perspective of a co-ordinated continuum of care, it's important to have a suite of services," said Sonia Isaac-Mann, the SLFNHA's chief executive officer and president.
"Those wraparound services that are needed so [they] don't just go into treatment — there's more to it than that, and it's looking at: how do we support them on their journey to healing and wellness?" she said.
Isaac-Mann said she sees SLFNHA's role as helping to co-ordinate different partners. She supports the chiefs' mental health resolution, and hopes to work closely with communities and organizations to help them achieve their goals.
"[The resolution] is very timely and it really puts everybody who has a role to play in this system on alert that we need to do this work, we need to do it now, it's not three years from now."
New mental-health care model
SLFNHA is finalizing a new mental health model for the First Nations it serves.
Chief operating officer Janet Gordon said the framework takes into consideration a comprehensive mental health and addictions review, and community consultations.
During SLFNHA's meeting last week, she said these core principles must be in place to make mental health and addictions services more accessible:
- Land-based, traditional practices.
- Language revitalization.
- Better access to electronic medical records and data.
- The physical space for specialized services to be offered.
But that's all contingent on flexible, sustainable funding, she said.
"We need a long-term solution and we need … infrastructure to support that at the community level," Gordon told CBC News. "It's developing those business plans, developing work plans with the communities, with different groups, and putting some timelines around it."
It's hoped that work will be done in the next four to five months, she added.
"We have identified a model that could address some of those areas in terms of being able to better respond to individual needs so that they can have access to service," she said. "Doing more prevention and promotion so we're not waiting for people to be in crisis or that they are not taking their own lives."
Another key focus is providing care to youth, and ensuring they have safe spaces in their communities and are empowered to lead the next generations, Gordon said.
Leaders seek Indigenous-led health care
Also at the SLFNHA meeting, the chiefs passed a position statement affirming they will no longer accept a health-care system that is controlled by the provincial and federal governments and offloads responsibility to First Nations.
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug Chief Donny Morris, a member of the Chiefs Council on Health (CCOH), has been a driving force in what is known as the health transformation project, which aims for an Indigenous-led, Indigenous-owned health-care system for the region's First Nations.
The passing of the position statement has triggered the start of a trilateral negotiation process to:
- Recognize and support First Nations' jurisdiction over public health in SLFNHA communities.
- Access immediate, sustainable resources to address long-standing gaps in health care.
- Explore interim models for care.
- Support a culturally-based and informed process that prioritizes community engagement and expertise.
"We signed [a] treaty to be partners with Ontario and Canada, and only two are benefiting in that scenario, and that's why we want to develop our own health system," Morris told CBC News.
"Better service, better care and better facilities ... that needs to happen now," he said. "We need to be at the table to meet with the provincial and federal government because, like I said, they are our partners. It cannot exclude us when we're treaty partners."
Passing the position statement means the provincial and federal governments must sit down with First Nations leaders to discuss next steps.
Morris said the plan is to reach out to all parties, including tribal councils and provincial territorial organizations, in the next month.
"It's gonna involve everybody to make this thing work — [not just] us trying to make the change."
Two things need to happen before this terrible situation can be turned around:
The last vestiges of the Residential School System - Child sexual abuse - needs to be stopped. That means removing sexual abusers from the communities, and getting serious help for their victims.
The second thing is an all-out war on drugs and alcohol in the communities. Those who consistently ignore this need to be run out of the communities.
Until these problems are addressed, there will be no progress in improving community standards.
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