Justice for joyce

Joyce Echaquan with her baby. Photo courtesy of family of Echaquan

Joyce Echaquan was a thirty-seven year old Atikamekw mother of seven from Manawan, who had been frequently visiting the hospital since 2014, due to prior heart complications.

Echaquan would record Facebook Live videos during her hospital visits due to the disturbing medical staff and not being fluent in French to have her cousin translate for her. Another cousin said that Echaquan would often talk about medical staff seeming "fed up" with her and would only make sure she was not in pain, rather than actually treating her.

In late August 2020, a month right before Echaquan’s death was another incident where she was mistreated by hospital staff. 33-year-old Jennifer Mac Donald, a patient attendant at a local Alzheimer’s centre who was at the hospital to support her father, overheard Echaquan screaming in a nearby cubicle and expressing concerns about her treatment. Mac Donald described Echaquan's medical attendants as "indifferent and verbally aggressive," said they were ignoring her pleas, and overheard a nurse ask: "will she ever shut up?" She approached Echaquan at one point to see if she could help, but was told by staff to "mind her own business."

Mac Donald did not know the woman being mistreated in August was Echaquan until she saw the Facebook Live video and recognized her.

Echaquan was admitted to the hospital on September 26, 2020 for stomach pains. She was restrained to her bed and given morphine on September 28, despite her concerns that she would have an adverse reaction to it because according to her family, she was allergic to morphine.

On September 28, Echaquan live-streamed for seven minutes. During the livestream, at least two hospital employees are heard insulting her in French. While Echaquan was moaning in pain, an employee asked her if she is "done acting stupid." Another employee told Echaquan that she "made some bad choices" and asked what her children would be thinking if they saw her, where she quietly responded with: "That's why I came here." Echaquan was also told that she is only "good for sex," the employees were the ones "paying for this," and that she was "stupid as hell." Echaquan died later that day.

One employee, a nurse, was dismissed from the hospital on September 29. A second employee, an orderly, was dismissed on October.

A vigil for Joyce Echaquan.

Tu as été la premiére
Qui ma dit que j'étais beau
Ma meilleure partenaire
Ensemble,on a fait tout
Tu est,ce que tu etait
Souriante et belle
Je le te répétait
Que tu etait belle
Tu m'as dit ,que j'etait ton roi
Que maintenant, j'y croit
Je te dit,que tu est belle
Tu ne sera jamais seule
Toujours encore,je te voit
Avec la tendresse de ta voix
Il y aura-t-il un jour ou un soir
Un moment,de ce revoir
Pourquoi dans mes rêves, j'ai le droit
Pourquoi pas dans tout les endroits
Je serait a jamais,a toi
Joyce ,tu m'attends déjà,que moi

You were the first
Who told me that I was handsome
my best partner
Together we did everything
You are, what you were
Smiling and beautiful
I repeated it to you
that you were beautiful
You told me I was your king
That now I believe in it
I tell you that you are beautiful
You will never be alone
Always again, I see you
With the tenderness of your voice
Will there be a day or a night
A moment, to see this again
Why in my dreams I have the right
Why not in all places
I will forever be yours
Joyce, you're already waiting for me, only me

Carol Dubé in front of the Lanaudière Regional Hospital Center with a photo of the mother, a year after her death.