“Have you watched the news?”
Having left Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to join the student movement of the “red squares” in Montreal for a demonstration, Jade Vernerey calls her mother with pride in her voice.
On the television news, we see demonstrators taking refuge inside UQAM and the police trying to dislodge them in a climate of high tension.
At just 16 years old, still in high school, Jade was part of the group that negotiated with the authorities to calm things down, she told her mother, Nancy Bergeron, on the phone that day.
“She had guts in mass, “my daughter,” says M.me Bergeron.
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The mother speaks of her daughter in the past tense, as Jade died in 2020 from an overdose of a mixture of medications and street drugs including isotonitazene.
She was 23 years old.
While studying for her Bachelor of Arts degree at Concordia, she remains as involved in social causes as ever. She works part-time in a community organization that prevents violence among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Endowed with extraordinary charisma and generosity, Jade “wore her heart on her feet and, in life and death, ran faster than everyone else”, summed up one of her friends, also an artist, who paid her a posthumous tribute in a dance choreography.
Her mother agrees to name them – her daughter and herself – in the hope that young drug addicts will have access to better health services.
Jade had been using drugs recreationally since she was a teenager. But in the midst of a pandemic, while she was in a tumultuous romantic relationship, her use became daily: ketamine and hydromorphone especially (Dilaudid, a morphine derivative).
Two weeks before her death, she confided in her mother: “I think I’ve developed an opiate addiction.” Jade probably obtained pills on the illicit market that contained something other than what she thought she was buying, her mother suspects.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Nancy Bergeron, mother of Jade Vernerey, died of an overdose in 2020
The young woman always had a naloxone kit with her. She used it a few times to save people around her, her mother says.
The night of her death, she consumes several substances with a friend to whom she confides about her relationship difficulties. When this friend leaves, leaving her alone in the apartment, Jade is on the phone with her lover.
Her boyfriend texts her a little past midnight. He tells her to take care of herself and that he doesn’t hold it against her (“take care, no hard feelings”). Then he commits suicide.
“Did she want to forget the argument and possibly the breakup of her relationship by exaggerating her consumption?” asks the coroner who investigated her death. “It is impossible to conclude.” It was not a suicide pact, but rather an accidental death, the latter claims at the end of her investigation.
Jade had a large circle of friends, many of whom also used drugs. In a burst of generosity, her mother took four of them in at her home and with relatives in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, to get them away from their dealer Montrealer.
Four years later: two are doing better. They are a couple and have a beautiful little girl who is now 2 years old.
Witnessing the obstacles that young drug addicts face when trying to get out of it, Mme Bergeron treats them like her own children. One of those she took into her home needed psychiatric care. Without money or a family doctor, “try to get a follow-up with a psychiatrist,” she says.
“Not just pills, thanks, good evening!” she continues. “Real follow-up, forget it.”
This young man, whose name we will not give so as not to harm his rehabilitation efforts, confirms: it was a real struggle when he wanted to seek help. Since Jade’s death, he has lost about twenty other friends to overdoses. What encourages him to keep going: his 2-year-old daughter – “his greatest pride”.
Mme Bergeron didn’t “save” them all, but she continues to watch over them. Some have sunk deeper. The friend who found Jade dead in her apartment “no longer has any teeth in her mouth.” Her kidneys are no longer functioning. “She consumes anything. It’s terrible,” she describes.
“It was in Jade’s nature to help others,” her mother said before bursting into tears. “I continue in her memory. I had to find a new reason to live.”