Jordan's story: 'No parent should have to bury their kid'
CBC
Kenneth Tomlinson was at his Edmonton construction job last July when he received a call from the Stollery Children's Hospital. It was vague at first, with the person on the other end of the line telling him he needed to come immediately.
"I'm like, 'Well, what's going on? I'm coming. But can you tell me what's going on?' And they're like, 'Look. This is an in-person conversation,'" said Tomlinson, 36.
Tomlinson immediately left work and drove to the hospital as thoughts of his funny, wise, loving, 15-year-old daughter Jordan flooded his mind. He thought of her infectious laugh, her twisted but hilarious sense of humour, the way she could light up any room she walked into.
"You know, anyone who meets her likes her," Tomlinson said. "That kid was the walking definition of loyalty.
"She had your back. Even if she felt you were in the wrong, she still wouldn't let her friends be attacked or talked down to. Just a friend that everyone needed."
Entering the lobby at the hospital, he saw a social worker, a couple of physicians and a police officer. He knew something had happened. His heart sank, and he felt a pit in his stomach.
He was brought upstairs to what someone called the quiet room. The staff laid it out for him. Jordan had been found unconscious and was rushed to hospital.
"The rest is history," Tomlinson said, his voice wavering. "She was admitted on July 7, and she took her last breath July 8 at 11 a.m."
Jordan was one of at least 1,706 Albertans who died of opioid poisoning last year. That works out, on average, to more than four deaths each and every day in 2023, the deadliest year on record for the province.
WATCH | Jordan's story: 'No parent should have to bury their kid':
Life hadn't been easy for Tomlinson, who was a single father living in Edmonton. His mother was a prostitute who was addicted to drugs, so he had grown up in child welfare. He was bounced around, by his count, to 32 foster homes and 17 group homes. He said he suffered multiple instances of abuse.
Tomlinson said he began to sell drugs when he was 14 and quickly moved up the ranks in the Alberta drug scene.
He ran into trouble with the law and was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking. Losses began to pile up in Tomlinson's life. He lost a number of close friends to fentanyl and violence, and his mother died in 2020.
Due to the nature of his lifestyle, for the first eight or nine years of Jordan's life, Tomlinson was an absent father, in and out of jail.
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