Cassandra Desmond, left, and her sister Chantel Desmond, seen here in Antigonish, N.S. in 2017, has called on both Ottawa and the Nova Scotia government to launch public inquiries.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
For nearly three years, Cassandra Desmond has doggedly pursued answers about the deaths of her family members.
She has protested on Parliament Hill, attempted without success to get a copy of her brother’s military medical record, and called on both Ottawa and the Nova Scotia government to launch public inquiries into the circumstances that may have led Afghan war veteran Lionel Desmond to shoot and kill his wife, Shanna; 10-year-old daughter, Aaliyah; mother, Brenda; and then himself in Upper Big Tracadie, N.S., on Jan. 3, 2017.
On Monday, some of that information will start coming to light as a long-awaited provincial fatality inquiry begins.
“This man still has a family here that deserves answers,” said Ms. Desmond, who wants to know the extent to which post-traumatic stress disorder and the kind of support her brother received after returning from combat contributed to the tragedy.
The fatality probe will begin with Nova Scotia’s chief medical examiner Matthew Bowes, who called for a broad inquiry involving both provincial and federal agencies nearly two years ago.
Mr. Desmond, an infantryman with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment in Gagetown, N.B., was 33 and had been out of the army for just 18 months when the killings took place.
“There’s lots to cover,” said Adam Rodgers, the lawyer representing Mr. Desmond’s estate, referring to the 60,000 documents to be admitted as evidence. “For 10 years, Lionel tried to get help. He knew things weren’t working and he said, ‘I’ll try something else.’ If he wasn’t feeling good, he would call somebody. He would get in touch. He would go to the hospital. He was always pro-active about his own mental health.”
The Nova Scotia inquiry will take place in the small seaside community of Guysborough, near the historic African Nova Scotian community where Mr. Desmond and his family lived.
The first three weeks will focus on examining the circumstances of Mr. Desmond’s release from St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish on the eve of the triple murder-suicide, and whether he had access to appropriate mental-health services, including treatment for occupational stress injuries such as PTSD. In addition, it will look at whether health-care and social-services providers who interacted with Mr. Desmond were trained to recognize the symptoms of occupational stress injuries or domestic violence.
It’s important to shine a light on Mr. Desmond’s treatment, Dalhousie University psychiatry and nursing professor Ingrid Waldron said, because of the inequalities and discrimination that black Nova Scotians can experience when accessing health and mental-health services – especially when it comes to seeking help for domestic violence.
“What we often learn as black people in childhood, don’t air your dirty laundry. … Don’t let the broader white community know what’s happening,” Dr. Waldron said.
“And that has everything to do with the fact that people would say, ‘I don’t want to hurt our men. Our black men are already stigmatized. And, as a woman, a black woman in my community, I don’t want to be the one speaking out against black men because I know then the police are going to be involved and then I’m responsible for further stigmatizing the black man.’”
The Attorney-General of Canada is participating in the inquiry to provide information on behalf of the RCMP, the Canadian Forces, Veterans Affairs, Health Canada and Public Safety Canada.
However, the inquiry does not have the power to call federal expert witnesses or ask for information on federal administrative systems. The inquest will culminate with Justice Warren Zimmer making recommendations, but these will be limited to the province of Nova Scotia.
Mr. Rodgers, the estate’s lawyer, said he’s particularly focused on finding out how, in the final months of Mr. Desmond’s life, he was able to leave a Montreal-based Veterans Affairs in-patient treatment program early.
“I think it should’ve been apparent that he wasn’t ready to leave and certainly wasn’t ready to go back to Nova Scotia without support programs in place,” Mr. Rodgers said.
Another major question the inquiry will examine is how Mr. Desmond, a man with a documented history of mental-health problems in the military, had his firearm licence reinstated by a general practitioner in New Brunswick. (A 2017 Globe and Mail investigation revealed Mr. Desmond was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with PTSD with major depression and depressive episodes.) Just a few months after he had expressed suicidal thoughts, the New Brunswick doctor and safety officer gave him back his firearm licence.
It was this licence that Mr. Desmond used to purchase a Soviet semi-automatic rifle at a sports store on Jan. 3, 2017. Hours later, he shot and killed his family – a disturbing sequence of events that bears a closer look, Mr. Desmond’s sister said.
“I truly believe if he didn’t have access to a firearm, he wouldn’t have been able to buy that firearm that day and lord knows what the situation would’ve been if he just wasn’t able to purchase a firearm,” Ms. Desmond said. “At the end of the day, that firearm is what caused these deaths.”
One of the factors that may have complicated Mr. Desmond’s ability to access appropriate treatment was that he didn’t have his military medical record. The document would have informed his doctors, who began treating him after he moved into civilian life, about his mental-health history. Veterans can only gain access to their military medical record by making a request under federal Access to Information and Privacy Acts, a process than can take six months or longer.
The inquiry will examine the restrictions on obtaining military medical records and how that may have affected Mr. Desmond in getting the help he needed.
Mr. Desmond is one of more than 80 soldiers and veterans who have killed themselves – and, in rare cases, others – after serving in the Afghanistan war.
In addition to the Attorney-General of Canada, other participants at the inquiry will include Shanna Desmond’s parents, Thelma and Ricky Borden; Cassandra; her sister, Chantel Desmond; a psychiatrist and emergency-room doctor who treated Mr. Desmond; the Nova Scotia Health Authority; and the Attorney-General of Nova Scotia.
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