Elderly residents left soiled and unfed after their caregivers fled the premises, 31 deaths in the space of a few weeks: a nursing home in Montreal has become the symbol of the terrible toll coronavirus is taking in Canada's long-term care homes.
The bleak situation discovered at the Residence Herron, in the Montreal suburb of Dorval, has triggered an investigation for gross negligence and a national reckoning among Canadians about the conditions in long-term care homes which account for half the country's more than 1,250 Covid-19 deaths. "I was sick to my stomach, I was really sick to my stomach," said Moira Davis, whose father Stanley Pinnell died at the Herron facility on 8 April. "All of a sudden these questions started flying through