In April 2020, thanks to the excellent work of journalist Aaron Derfel, who covered the tragedy of the Herron private CHSLD in Dorval, we collectively understood that we were rushing towards a massacre of disproportionate proportions. Hecatomb that I qualified as “gerontocide” and that I define as allowing aging people to die in undignified conditions. What happened in Herron and elsewhere was nothing new, especially for social gerontology researchers, including myself. On the other hand, what struck me then was the scale of excess mortality, its magnitude, the overflow, the loss of control of managers and the government, not to mention François Legault’s attempt to deny en bloc what took place behind closed doors. A gerontocidal episode is never good for a re-election.
The Quebec state has neither the means nor the tools or resources to guarantee a dignified aging for all people 65 years of age and over living on its territory – and even less a dignified end of life, as yet promised by the Act respecting end-of-life care. Worse still, the state does not have the capacity to carry out these projects in the context of demographic transformations and climate change. The risk of the Quebec state’s ability to “take care” of its population collapsing therefore does not appear urgent enough to act. The dismal fiction in which a large part of the Quebec political class evolves is not encumbered with these things. Golf, IF, real estate development, REM, tunnels, nationalism, major infrastructure projects, extractivism and the learned precepts of Pierre-Yves McSween are already taking pride of place. But the XXIe century has surprises in store for us which, like powerful waves, will crash into our fragile physical and social infrastructures.
So what are these socio-environmental risks that will potentially hamper our ability to take care of aging people and include them at the heart of social life? First, the heat waves, which will put more and more pressure on our health and social services system. They will increase in frequency, duration and intensity. Then, the rising water levels and the multiplication of fires, which will threaten several communities. The electricity grid, the drinking water system or the telecommunications networks could all be at risk. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was concerned about the possible disruption of the food and drug supply chain. This risk will not magically disappear, and other epidemics of infectious diseases will emerge. I am neither a climatologist nor an expert in environmental risks, but I believe that we urgently need to script and plan these situations, otherwise it is still the aging people who will pay the price for our collective lack of vision. I don’t ever want to feel the way I did on March 13, 2020: taken by surprise and ready to blindly trust sinister accountants.
Sometimes I feel the diffuse presence of these pandemic deaths that roam the city, as if in suspense. These solitary ends of life, confined, hungry, leave sad memories, marked with shame. We are haunted by these deaths which convey both a message and a warning: “We should not have died like this”, “We will haunt you so that it never happens again”. We must appropriate this obsession, make it our own, by starting now to work, to rebuild social relations on other bases. The current model, which forces us to live isolated, in nuclear families, in small hermetic economic units, in debt, evolving in these sad parallel lives, dependent on professionalization and institutionalization of social reproduction, will not stand up for much longer. . It is necessary to develop other geographical and anthropological imaginaries, this time based on the possibility of sudden collapse of infrastructures and assistance systems.
Without major, rapid and sweeping changes, there is absolutely no doubt that gerontocidal episodes similar to the one we just experienced will recur. If politicians turn their thumbs, who will tackle the Herculean task of strengthening our collective skills for resilience, emergency assistance, mutual support and community risk management, in anticipation of what is coming? What guarantees does the state give us that such a debacle will not happen again? None. Based on this observation, I offer a final lesson: let’s promise ourselves that, during the next crisis, we will take care of our dead. After all, it’s our bond with them that connects us to the past, present, and future. Let’s listen to their complaint.
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