Posted at 5:00 a.m.
By operating her camera, on this beautiful Friday in June 2019, Charlene Vacon has no reason to think that she is taking the very last photo of her eldest son.
Archie is particularly radiant that afternoon. He is 19 years old. He just got his driver’s license. He has started a summer job at the Styrochem expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) plant in Baie-D’Urfé – a job that prepares him for the industrial engineering program he is due to start in the fall at Concordia University. .
“I was sitting here, on the terrace,” said her mother, pointing to the courtyard of the house in Saint-Lazare, three years after the events. “Archie ran down the stairs. He came home from work and was still covered in all those little styrofoam balls. He had a thousand and one things to say about his day. »
Archie confides in him that he feels useful at work. He begins to bond with his colleagues. That same day, he helped organize a BBQ at the factory.
Attracted by communist ideas, he then read a book written by Lenin which deals in particular with work in manufacture.
He told me about this book, that it was the best book he had read. I took his picture because he looked in such a good mood.
Charlene Vacon, mother of Archibald Lévis MacIsaac-Vacon
In the evening, after having dinner at home, Archie heads for Montreal to celebrate in a bar on Saint-Laurent Boulevard with friends. During the night, one of them finds Archie in the toilet, unconscious.
His death was recorded at 4:20 a.m. on June 29, 2019. Three bags were found near the young man – two empty and one full. This is analyzed. It contains fentanyl.
The coroner concludes fentanyl and alcohol poisoning.
Boundless curiosity
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
To this day, Charlene Vacon and Rob MacIsaac do not know whether their son deliberately took fentanyl out of a desire to know its effects or whether he accidentally took this powerful opioid, thinking he was taking another drug.
Today, Archie’s parents blame their son’s death on his insatiable curiosity.
Philosophy, religions, astronomy, chemistry: from a young age, Archie was interested in everything. He writes little booklets on a myriad of subjects – including one, at age 14, on opioids. As a teenager, he began to study Japanese and Greek, volunteered for the NDP.
“If he was curious about something, he would do all the research necessary to become an expert. I still donate $50 to Wikipedia every year because it’s been his source of entertainment for many years,” says his father, Rob MacIsaac.
Between 2015 and 2018, her mother, Charlene, accepted an emergency care mandate for the Alberta government. She was then at the forefront of witnessing the opioid crisis that was beginning to sweep across Western Canada.
“When I got back, we had good conversations about drugs with the children and the fact that there are new risks due to the substances that contaminate them,” says Ms.me Vacon.
Despite this, Archie’s parents suspect that their son is experimenting on his own. They don’t care too much. After all, the young man has friends, does well in school and bites into life.
It is only after his death that they discover envelopes in his room from Ontario, presumably ordered from the deep web.
“We realized that his adventures with drugs went deeper than we suspected,” says his father, who refuses to blame it on any bad influence.
“Archie was the one in the band who was interested in it. He was the one doing the research. The night he died, he had gone to the bathroom alone to do his stuff while the others were doing other things,” he notes.
To this day, Charlene Vacon and Rob MacIsaac do not know whether their son deliberately took fentanyl out of a desire to know its effects or whether he accidentally took this powerful opioid, thinking he was taking another drug.
“We don’t know, and we don’t try to find out,” sighs his mother. Somehow he took fentanyl, too much fentanyl. Some are angry with the drug dealer, with the police. We are not angry with anyone. In the current context in Canada, that is what is happening. »
But they can’t help but think that if the stigma around drugs wasn’t so strong, their son might not have had to hide in a bar bathroom to experience his experiences.
And might have been able to survive the youthful mistake that stole his life.