Why this man walked 1,000 kilometres of icy roads, dragging an oxygen tank

Share

For 17 days, Norman Shewaybick walked icy roads spanning more than 1,000 kilometres between Thunder Bay and his home in Webequie First Nation, dragging an oxygen tank that he says could have saved his wife.

Shewaybick's journey ended earlier this week, when he pulled the tank up to the remote community's nursing station, dropped to his knees and sobbed.

"I lost my wife," he had said in an earlier interview. "And I tell you right now, she wasn't supposed to die."

He said his wife, Laura Shewaybick, was having difficulty breathing when she arrived at Webequie's nursing station last September. There was only one full oxygen canister in the building, he said, and the tank ran out before medevac transportation could arrive. He said he helped his wife breathe using mouth-to-mouth until she could be airlifted to Thunder Bay. She spent a month in intensive care and had recovered enough to be transferred into a regular hospital room, he said, but she died on Oct. 8.

The couple's four sons, along with Laura's best friend, Jessie Sofea, completed the walk along with Norman. The purpose of the walk, he said, was to raise awareness about the poor quality of health care delivery provided to remote First Nations communities.

Those problems are well documented. Last spring, the country's Auditor-General issued a scathing report assessing the delivery of health programs to remote First Nations communities in Northern Ontario and Manitoba, where people face significant health challenges and have limited access to provincial services.

Health Canada operates nursing stations in remote communities as the first point of contact for residents needing medical care. Among a number of criticisms, the Auditor-General's report said Health Canada had not assessed whether each station was even capable of providing all services deemed essential by the department. Moreover, the department had not communicated to First Nations people what essential services each nursing station should provide. Shewaybick's walk prompted promises from Health Canada representative at a meeting held on Tuesday.

"We are now instituting a whole review of all our nursing stations in Northern Ontario," said Keith Conn, the regional director of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada. "Second to that, we are going to be purchasing and acquiring oxygen concentrators for each and every community. … It's only the beginning. It's not the end. There needs to be a lot more work in terms of collaboration, short-term, intermediate and long-term actions."

With reports from Adrienne Fox and Brent Wesley in Webequie First Nation