Julien Raza wakes up with a migraine every morning. Victim of a powerful heat stroke in 2018, this electrician has since suffered from persistent after-effects. Light and noise torment him. And the heat, he can’t stand it anymore.
“We think we are armored until it happens, and then it comes like a punch”, says the man who, even today, says he cannot think about a complex problem without a powerful headache assails him.
Heat is probably the most concrete, ruthless and inescapable threat posed by climate change in Quebec. It endangers the health — and even the life — of the most exposed and isolated people. Those with chronic illnesses are particularly at risk.
Three testimonies collected by The duty, including that of Mr. Raza, allow us to better understand who are the victims of the heat in the province. These stories also show the importance of adapting quickly to the changing climate and halting its warming.
Work and Trauma
The heatstroke suffered by Mr. Raza dates back to one of the “most intense and sustained” heat waves in Quebec history. On July 5, 2018, the mercury was around 34°C in Beauharnois, Montérégie, where this 35-year-old man worked in a data center. The heat given off by the computers was then added to that of the outside.
While Mr. Raza is cleaning up, he feels unwell. “In two minutes, I lost all the water I had in my body,” he says. I started to see everything wrong. I had difficulty speaking and moving. »
Confused, struggling with nausea, he extracts himself from the overheated room. Thanks to water bottles and putting himself under a jet of cold water, he succeeded in lowering his body temperature. Since he is in no condition to drive, a colleague drops him off at home; he then sleeps for 24 hours.
Mr. Raza returns to work the following day. He has a new heat stroke the following week. This time, he goes to the hospital, where the doctors put him off work for two weeks. But when he returns to work, the heat gives him a third “punch”. His migraines begin after this third event.
“It’s like my head can’t take it anymore,” he said. The electrician then began a work stoppage which, apart from brief returns, lasted two years. He initially received benefits, but, after the decree consolidating his work injury, he was forced to dip into his savings, because he did not feel able to return to his post.
“Eight months no salary, it eats up your savings, let’s say. It’s the down payment from the house that went for my survival,” he explains, with, in hand, diagnoses of mixed headaches, heat intolerance and post-traumatic syndrome linked to heat.
Mr. Raza considers that his employer has shown “tremendous ignorance” in terms of prevention against the dangers of heat. He also believes that under labor standards, he probably should never have worked in rooms where, according to him, the temperature exceeded 50°C.
From 2017 to 2021, there were 187 heat-related occupational injuries in Quebec, according to data sent by the Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST) to the To have to. At least three workers also died of heatstroke.
Old age and vulnerability
Although workers are unquestionably at risk, it is the elderly, especially those suffering from chronic diseases or obesity, who constitute the bulk of heat victims.
Jean-Marc Michaud was living with his spouse in low-cost housing in La Pocatière, in Bas-Saint-Laurent, when, in 2019, high temperatures hit the region. The 78-year-old man was struggling with numerous health problems, explains his daughter, Annie Michaud.
“He was consumed by life. He was still independent, but it took someone with him all the time, ”she says. Leg pain, lung disease, heart failure, onset of Alzheimer’s: Mr. Michaud was in bad shape. “Three or four years before his death, he had spent a month on dialysis in intensive care,” says his daughter.
On the morning of July 21, he stayed in bed longer than usual. His wife let him sleep and went about his business. “At dinner time, she went to look in the bedroom and she said: ‘Come on, Jean-Marc, wake up!’ But he never woke up,” says M.me Michaud.
In his report, the coroner concludes that Mr. Michaud is “probably died of acute renal failure on kidneys already mortgaged by the disease, following a water restriction and significant and prolonged heat”.
The heat had been building up for several days in the couple’s apartment, adds the coroner. On the day of the death, it was 29°CM Michaud used a fan and cold washcloths to cool down, but it was not enough.
Although she admits that it was very hot at her parents’ house, Ms.me Michaud thinks that strictly pointing the heat paints an incomplete picture of the death. “In their report, the coroners cannot just put: it’s the heat, thank you good evening! I have it a little on the heart…”, she confides.
“In general, we still greatly underestimate the impact of heat on health,” notes Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, president of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment.
Even when people don’t suffer from heatstroke, high temperatures “increase the stress” on their bodies, the family doctor explains. “The heat will precipitate different problems, such as heart disease, lung disease, stroke and kidney failure. »
In periods of extreme heat, we observe in Quebec as elsewhere a mortality from all causes combined of 10 to 15% higher, notes the DD Petrin-Desrosiers.
Sanity and heat
In addition to chronic diseases, another little-known risk factor contributes strongly to heat vulnerability: schizophrenia.
During the 2018 heat wave in Montreal, for example, 26% of heat-related deaths were observed among people with schizophrenia, even though they represent less than 1% of the population of the metropolis.
On the other side of the river, Nicole Dagenais was part of this population at risk. This 59-year-old woman with schizophrenia was living in July 2018 in a rooming house in Longueuil, Montérégie, when the powerful heat wave hit southern Quebec.
“She’s not someone who could make decisions for herself,” says Denis Dagenais, her brother. “We know it: if you’re too hot, you go in the shade, you put on a fan if you don’t have air conditioning, you stay quiet, you drink water. But she didn’t have the presence of mind to do that. »
In addition to her mental illness, Ms.me Dagenais suffered from thyroid problems and psoriasis. She was taking medication to control her manic episodes, an antipsychotic, an anxiolytic and an antidepressant.
After living with her parents until her mid-forties, Ms.me Dagenais lived alone. Since her sister, her father and her mother had died, she had been rather isolated, explains her brother. Nicole and he had fallen out and rarely saw each other.
On the evening of July 6, 2018, one of M’s neighborsme Dagenais in the rooming house, worried at not having seen her all day, asks to have the door of her room opened. She discovers the lady on the ground, her face against the ground, lifeless.
After analysis, the coroner judges that “complications of exposure to excessive heat” explain the death. “That room was an oven,” says Mr. Dagenais. At the time of Nicole’s death, there was no air conditioning unit there, only fans that were working.
In addition, Nicole Dagenais’ body probably had trouble regulating its temperature because of the medications she was taking, notes the coroner. This problem partly explains why people with schizophrenia are overrepresented in heat wave deaths.
Fresh solutions
The two victims and the relative of a victim questioned by The duty insist on one thing: air conditioning could have changed things.
However, this is not the panacea to counter the deadly heat waves multiplied by the climate crisis, answers Céline Campagna, researcher on climate issues at the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ).
In the event of a major power outage during a heat wave, dependence on air conditioning could lead to a “catastrophe”. “It is unthinkable to put all our eggs in one basket, it would even be dangerous,” she explains. In addition, by cooling buildings, air conditioning heats the outside air. This creates an even warmer environment for neighbors who don’t have an air conditioner.
“In an ideal world, public establishments – hospitals, CLSCs, CHSLDs, intermediate resources – would be air-conditioned and municipalities could offer refreshing stops”, believes for her part the DD Petrin-Desrosiers. However, installing air conditioning in all residences is “illusory” and does not change the underlying problem, according to her.
The solutions recommended by the experts thus consist of mobilizing community organizations during heat waves, strengthening the social fabric, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and massively greening living environments.
Speaking of greening, Julien Raza seizes every opportunity to immerse himself in the forest to relieve the after-effects of his heat stroke. This Montreal resident gets away almost every weekend on a camping trip. Since last fall, he has also changed jobs: he is now an electrical mechanic in the food industry, where he enjoys a cool working environment.
With his wife, he plans to move to the Laurentians next fall to escape the growing heat of Montreal. “I don’t want to spend my time in a dark apartment. We don’t have land, the rest of us, that’s why we go out of town every weekend: it’s the only way to survive in there. »