Family desperate for answers after learning late dad, 92, allegedly abused at Oakview Place

David Middleton was a good man. He loved his wife of 60-plus years, Louise, and their six children. 

Growing up the family didn't have much, but they had enough.

Middleton, 92, worked tirelessly as a sheet metal worker, or "tin basher," as he called it, to put food on the table. He coached hockey and soccer and was a talented artist. He loved Forty Creek rye and a cold beer on a hot day. 

Middleton spent his last years at Oakview Place, a personal care home in Winnipeg, where he moved after a stroke in early 2018.

His family says he deserved better in his final days. His eldest daughter wishes she could tell him that.

"To be able to give them a hug and say, I'm sorry this happened to you. He's not there anymore," Middleton's daughter, Dianna Klassen, said through tears.

Her late father is one of 15 Oakview Place residents who, it was revealed earlier this month, were allegedly abused by two aides at the care home.

On Father's Day, six months after his death, Middleton's children gathered at the cottage he built for them in Gull Lake to lay his ashes beside their mom's.

The next day, another daughter, Nancy Trauer, got a phone from a senior director at Extendicare, the company that owns Oakview Place.

"I was kind of taken aback about that. I thought, well, do you even know my dad has passed away anyway?" Trauer said from her St. James home.

Extendicare was calling to tell Trauer her father was among the residents who had allegedly been abused.

"He's been gone since January, so to be told this was happening prior to that and then continued even after, I guess that was one thing to be thankful for — that Dad had passed away and he wasn't suffering that abuse any longer," Trauer said.

Middleton's stroke left him blind in one eye, and he had difficulty hearing.

"The fact that they picked on such a vulnerable person, these people need to pay," Trauer said.