The news nearly killed my mother. I believe that it hastened my father’s death. In February 2003, my father suffered a debilitating stroke that stole his two most precious faculties – speech and memory. Because my parents lived in Agincourt, paramedics rushed him to Scarborough Grace Hospital.

Days later SARS struck the same floor of the hospital where my father was recovering. Nevertheless, nurses told us they could isolate Dad sufficiently so that Mom could still suit up with PPE and see him. But then the Conservative provincial government, thinking it knew better than the health-care specialists, intervened.

“For his safety,” they told my mother, “we’re isolating your father in the new PPP (public-private partnership) hospital in Brampton.”

“How is my mother, living in Agincourt, going to be able to see my father in Brampton?” I asked the office of then health minister Tony Clement.

“She can communicate with him by fax,” they recommended. (more…)