On July 26, 2024, the unthinkable happened: our little Julien, 8 months old, died suddenly. A tragedy for our family and loved ones. Despite the horror, this tragic event brought beauty and light into the immense darkness. It is in the shadow of tragedy that humanity emerges.
We have received love from all sides, from our friends, our family, our colleagues, but also from complete strangers, through gestures that have done a great deal of good. They say it takes a village to raise a child; I would say it takes at least two to say goodbye.
Indeed, on the one hand, we were overwhelmed with attention and love: our friends who came to our house in a squad to empty the furniture of Julien’s clothes and give everything away to make our return home easier, the funeral home in Magog who told us that there would be no charge for their services “because what we are going through is horrible”, our mothers who looked after our other children despite their indescribable pain, our doctor at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université Laval in Quebec City who hugged us as we left the hospital without Julien, a psychologist friend who accepts our pain and helps us see things clearly, our friends, our family and even the owner of the Bowen café in Orford who have been taking turns filling our fridge with little dishes for weeks.
On the other hand, as if to remind us ad nauseam of the injustice of life, we receive, as soon as we get home, a bill for Julien’s last ambulance ride—a bill for the ambulance ride of a deceased child, our child. Who in the chain of the process thinks it’s a good idea to send a bill for $180 for a child who is no longer with us? Is it, collectively, worth it?
A few days after the tragedy, we also learned that the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP for short) would cut my wife’s benefits two weeks after Julien’s death. If we understand the message correctly, our government is telling us: thank you for your contributions, but no time to bury your son, now it’s time to get back to work! The only word that comes to mind at that moment: violence. When we know that the QPIP has surpluses, it’s hard to explain this type of decision.
Anthropologists argue that what distinguishes humans is their ability to design complex tools, tools to make tools. Indeed, for hundreds of thousands of years, humans have been striving to create tools to increase their strength and their hold on the world.
Our systems, whether they are IT, procurement, social, government, etc., are all tools that are supposed to increase our strengths, allow us to do more and do better. But who thought that asking parents who have just lost a child to return to work after two weeks was a good idea? Probably no one (and we hope so!), but our organizations have become so imposing and impersonal that humanity is too often squeezed into a blind spot.
The great challenge of the 20th centurye century was to build these systems, the great challenge of the 21st century.e will be to make them human. What we have endured are just a few examples among many others that contribute to the nausea of the “system” that we see emerging everywhere in the West.
We wonder, then: is there a Minister of Humanity in the room? Obviously not. But an idea for 2026: what if we appointed a person responsible for putting humanity in our various ministries? Quebec is a nation of love, we would have everything we need to get there. So, who is game ?