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Faith Embleton fondly remembers her daughter's first memory of Allisdair Leishman.

"She told me a story one time where he was hiding in the tree dressed all in black," she said. "He jumped out and scared the daylights out of her. He said he was practising being a ninja.

"He was a pretty outdoors kind of guy and he loved his job."

Allisdair "Azzie" Leishman, a career helicopter engineer and father, passed away in March. He was 51 years old.

A traditional funeral was held for him in his home community of K'agee Tu (Kakisa) on June 7. A traditional fire and drummers performed in his honour.

"He took pride in his life and did everything really well," said his mother, Margaret Leishman, who had been watching over her son with the help of Embleton for over a decade since a much publicized and still very poorly understood incident left him incapacitated. "He loved fishing and hunting — every spring and fall he was harvesting.

"He always said to me, 'Mom, should anything happen to me, I just want to say thank you for giving me life — and to all my family and friends, I really enjoyed their company. For that I say thank you.'"

Allisdair spent the last 16 years of his life largely confined to a bed at Stanton hospital, unable to interact with the people around him. Before that, however, his mother said Allisdair was a skilled artisan, a good father and a loving husband.

"Allisdair was a very intelligent person," she said. "He looked at everything at every angle. Everything he encountered was a learning experience for him.

"He was really keen on going to school and also hunting. We would use our harvest to feed our family."

Traditional way of life

The youngest of five brothers, Allisdair was a keen student. Margaret said she brought the family back to the community in 1984 to learn the traditional way of life of her grandparents. As there was no school in Kakisa at the time, Margaret sent Allisdair and one of his brothers to Fort Simpson to complete school.

Even outside of the classroom, Allisdair was a quick study. Simply by watching others, he taught himself how to butcher a moose.

After finishing high school, Allisdair continued his studies in Yellowknife, pursuing his passion of aviation.

"He was always really keen on being a pilot, ever since he was little," Margaret recalled. "Moreso after his dad got his pilot's licence and could fly a small plane.

"My husband died in a vehicle accident on the Simpson road in 1985, so for 40 years I was the only person they knew as a parent."

However, Allisdair's dreams were brought to a crashing halt when he was taken to the hospital on Nov. 4, 2009.

A dramatic turn

Allisdair's life would change in a dramatic way. It started with him shovelling snow in his driveway when he began to show signs of hypothermia and confusion. He was taken to Stanton Hospital without shoes or proper winter clothing and left unsupervised in the emergency receiving area.

He then left the hospital, only to return shortly afterwards and enter the facility's kitchen, which was unlocked. There, he stabbed himself in the chest with a knife. A statement later filed in NWT Supreme Court in 2016 by then-kitchen manager Keith Carter indicated that "to his knowledge there was no metal cutlery, such as a steak knife, available to the public in November 2009."

Details of what happened next were investigated by an independent inquiry lead by Dr. Douglas C. Perry. Findings were submitted to Stanton Territorial Health Authority. In her 2011 letter to then-Great Slave MLA Glen Abernethy calling for a public inquiry, Margaret alleged that her son stabbed himself "in front of staff" and wrote she "was told that the hospital medical team was not hasty coming to the aid of my son, who was lying in a pool of blood on the floor in the kitchen. From what I was told and understand, apparently those who could have saved my son that day were in a meeting and did not hear the pages."

Findings from the 2011 inquiry were never made public, but at the time, the GNWT said the report "endorses the professional response of Stanton employees." The NWT's forbids disclosure of internal investigations, even to a family member — Margaret has therefore never learned the official truth of what happened to her son.

"I personally think the worst thing that happened was when we asked in the legislative assembly for a public inquiry and they did an internal one," said Embleton. "Margaret was not privy to most of the information.

"What she did know she learned from the news media, like everybody else."

Recommendations

Two recommendations came out of the report — a call to "remind" emergency medical personnel to encourage family members to join patients at the emergency department — the NWT Medical Travel program currently does not cover funding for relatives to join patients on emergency flights except under extraordinary circumstances.

The other recommendation was to train special constables to intervene when patients are presenting a danger to themselves or others. It was never implemented. The Department of Justice told ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø media in 2012 it was determined to be “not an appropriate approach."

Embleton noted that she had seen a change at the hospital since the incident, including locked doors, glass barriers and other security measures.

'I cannot imagine the pain'

While life went on for everyone else at Stanton that day, for Allisdair it was never the same. During the emergency, his heart stopped beating long enough to cause significant brain damage. Unable to care for himself, he was sent to the Centennial Centre for Mental Health and Brain Injury in Ponoka, Alta, where his mother said he was making significant progress and was out of bed exercising on a daily basis. However, four months later, he was transferred back to Stanton without explanation, where Margaret said — attributing to the staffing difficulties the NWT healthcare system — his treatment consisted of 20 minutes of physio and a bath each week for the next 16 years.

Embleton lamented the decision and wondered aloud how different Allisdair's life could have been if he had been able to remain in Ponoka.

"His care here (in Yellowknife) was not optimal," she said. "It was sustaining, but he would have been much better off in (Ponoka) or someplace like that where they had rehabilitation services. When you're a paraplegic, you need exercise to keep your muscles from going [into] atrophy. He didn't have that, he needed professional exercise. His muscles were really, really tight. I cannot imagine the pain he must have had.

"He recognized people when they went there and displayed emotion when he saw people. He was locked inside his body, he couldn't speak, couldn't tell anybody what he was thinking. It was terrible for him. He seemed to know what was going on," she added.

Margaret spent the next decade-and-half fighting for her son, travelling regularly at her own expense from Kakisa to Hay River and onward to Yellowknife to visit him and help him rehabilitate.

Now that his struggle is over, Margaret expressed her anger about how he was treated.

"It's been really hard," she said. "I'm going to be 82. I am angry. My children didn't have to die.

"I'm angry because there's a lot of people who need services that are not available. Mental health services should be set up in our communities. We don't have treatment centres in the North to heal people.

"I'm still fighting for the others in the hospital. I don't want people to go through what I went through."

Margaret wants Allisdair to be remembered for his kind heart, good sense of humour and unfettering resolve. Embleton feels the same way. She added that she hopes the family can finally start to heal after over a decade of coping with the tragedy.

"He was really a good guy," she said. "I liked him a lot. So I would like to remember him standing beside his helicopter, all smiling.

"He was a good father and a good son. His mother certainly loved him and he was a gentle soul."