Freestyle skiing. Triathlon. Skateboard. BMX. The youngest of a close-knit family, Jonathan Phoenix Boulard has always been a guy who likes to move.
“Jo was the sportsman, the reckless guy. The one who always had projects, ”says his sister Émilie.
“He was the family jester. He made everyone laugh,” adds his father, Alain.
As a teenager, Jonathan accumulates his money during the summer to spend the winter skiing in the mountains of Western Canada and the United States.
The summer of his 18th birthday, he was working in a hardware store when his boss asked him to clean a roadside using a blade brushcutter with a colleague.
None of the boys have ever handled such tools. At one point, the co-worker’s machine leapt up and cut deep into Jonathan’s legs.
The young man loses a lot of blood, to the point where we fear for his life. He escapes, but not unscathed. The years that followed were marked by surgery and rehabilitation.
There is also the trauma, the psychological after-effects, the bereavement to be done — aspects which, according to the family, are neglected by the health system.
Jonathan stayed with a resentment. He said to himself: “they healed me physically, they patched me up and they decided that I was ok”.
Alain Boulard, father of Jonathan Phoenix Boulard
“Eighteen is the age when you define yourself. Jo saw her friends leaving for college. He picked himself up alone, with our parents, having to relearn how to walk, ”says his big sister Emilie, who has always been very close to her brother.
To ease Jonathan’s pain, doctors prescribed him morphine and oxycodone — his first encounter with opioids.
Positive ambition
Despite the hard blow, Jonathan does not let himself sink. He has “Positive Ambition” tattooed on his fingers and lives by this mantra. He soon shared an apartment with his sister Émilie facing Laurier Park in Montreal.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
At the Saint-Charles-Borromée family home, the Phoenix Boulard, Alain, Émilie and Lisette family
“In front of people, he was always super positive. He was always making jokes. Life was always beautiful, ”says the latter.
Jonathan wants everyone to feel good around him. To the point of sometimes inviting homeless people to the apartment!
“Everyone loved him, he had an aura… Obviously, all my friends wanted to marry him! said his sister.
Kayaking, hiking, biking: Jonathan is gradually starting to be active again. Deft with his hands, he made furniture, took courses in cabinetmaking and masonry. He is involved in campaigns for the prevention of work accidents alongside actor Claude Legault.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
The Phoenix Boulard family today cherishes the furniture and gardens built by Jonathan.
“I sometimes asked him where he found his motivation. He would come home and say to me: “Allez Mi! We’re going to the gym, we’re going to do push ups, we go to the park, we go biking.” We had a private coach and we trained three or four times a week. He was in pain, he had difficulty because of his leg, but he did everything anyway, ”says his sister.
Jonathan starts traveling again. Vietnam on a motorbike, Indonesia with the family: he even crossed New Zealand by bike for two months. He began to meditate and stayed in Vipassana centers.
But those who know the young man well know that there are flaws behind this facade. Painkillers have left Jonathan with an addiction that he satisfies with substances bought on the black market.
Sometimes he went away for whole weekends, he mixed everything up… He needed an escape.
Emilie Phoenix Boulard, sister of Jonathan Phoenix Boulard
His father remembers “bad trips” experienced in his room at the family home.
“We could hear him screaming, as if he was arguing with someone,” he says.
“He was reliving his accident,” says Émilie.
The family convinces him to go to therapy. The day before he died, he checked off two months of sobriety on his calendar when he visited a friend’s house. He uses what he believes to be oxycodone purchased on the black market, a drug he knows well. He drinks a few beers, takes amphetamines and cocaine. A diet which, according to his sister, is not unusual for him.
Jonathan goes back to sleep with his parents. They hear him snoring loudly. They find him dead in his room the next day. He is 27 years old.
The analyzes carried out by the coroner will reveal the presence in Jonathan’s body of a substance called isotonitazene. At the time, in 2020, this powerful synthetic opioid had just been identified in Quebec.
At the family home in Saint-Charles-Borromée, the Phoenix Boulard family today cherishes the furniture and gardens built by Jonathan.
“He was an extraordinary son,” his father said. Even when he took drugs, he was always kind, generous. »