Grieving daughter begs Ontario to mandate vaccines for long-term care staff after vaccinated mother dies

Kim Beaver says that as she sat outside the room where her mother died at a long-term care facility in Oshawa, Ont., she could hear the haunting sounds down the hall of other seniors, sick with COVID-19, wheezing and struggling to breathe.

She said her beloved mother, Gail Candusso, an 82-year-old woman “with a heart of gold,” was the first person to die at Hillsdale Estates, a 300-bed long-term care home in Oshawa, on Sept. 5. After her death, seven other residents at the home died too with the last one reported just over a week ago.

While the fourth wave of the deadly pandemic continues to plunder on, Beaver is urgently calling for a province-wide vaccine mandate for all long-term care workers. She says she doesn’t wish her experience on anyone.

“I challenge anyone to go sit in that hall full of COVID patients, and listen to the sounds that are coming out of those people, it's horrendous,” she said, her voice shaking. “I sat in my mum’s doorway and the gentlemen across the hall was having dinner in his doorway, and two days later he was dead. He died right after my mom.”

“It is just terrible. If you're working with vulnerable people, and you're not willing to protect them, I think you're in the wrong profession.”