Former beneficiary attendant Jean Bottari died Thursday evening of a heart attack. He was known for his many speeches during the pandemic, defending seniors and health care personnel in the media and on social networks. He would have been 61 on Saturday.
“He was with his wife at home, then all of a sudden she heard him fall,” says his daughter, Cassandra Bottari-Laporte, in an interview with The duty. “He collapsed on the ground. She attempted resuscitation, but it was already too late. The verdict is a violent heart attack. It didn’t leave him a chance, despite long minutes of resuscitation attempts.
After the announcement of his death, messages of condolences quickly invaded the web. On Twitter, the emergency physician at the Montreal Heart Institute, Alain Vadeboncoeur, speaks of a “person of conviction, integrity and humanity, who has always fought for his patients, the elderly”. The co-spokesperson for Québec Solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, underlines the “sad death [d’un] tireless campaigner for the dignity of seniors.
During calls from the Government of Quebec to fill the positions of beneficiary attendants at the height of the pandemic, Jean Bottari, then retired, had put on the blue blouse, he who had made a career of it at the Marie-Clarac Hospital in Montreal North. A knee injury had however forced him to stop this return to the front, says his daughter.
On the networks, he urged Internet users to become beneficiary attendants themselves. “It’s a cause that was close to his heart,” said Cassandra Bottari-Laporte.
The death of Jean Bottari comes three weeks after that of his own father, Nello Bottari. The latter had been swept away by COVID-19 on July 14. In an open letter published in La Presse, Jean Bottari was also indignant that no one had come to check whether his father, “the gentleman from A-12”, had indeed died, more than two hours after he informed a member of the medical staff.