Toxi-City: Deadly drugs in Edmonton — Overdoses are happening across all neighbourhoods and families are bearing the brunt of the crisis
Anna Junker Edmonton Journal
© Provided by Edmonton Journal Faye Gray holds a photo of her daughter, Lindsey Gray, in St. Albert on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. Lindsey died of an overdose in 2015.
This is part one of a three-part series from reporter Anna Junker exploring the toxic drugs crisis in Edmonton.
Today, we look at how overdoses are killing people in record numbers, and the effect these losses have on families. Part Two, next Saturday: We follow a group of dedicated volunteers who are taking to Edmonton’s streets, alleyways and transit pedways to assist those suffering with addiction. Part Three, April 2: We sit down with Alberta’s associate minister of mental health and addiction to discuss what the province is doing to combat the crisis.
Joshua Corbiere died where his parents believed he would be safest, a recovery centre.
On Aug. 19, 2021, less than 24 hours after he entered Thorpe Recovery Centre, a residential treatment and medical detox facility about 250 km east of Edmonton, Joshua took his last breaths there.
His father, Raymond Corbiere, said his son’s big heart drew great love from those who knew him. He was passionate about sports, particularly baseball and football, the latter of which he played through all three years of high school.
“He was a super, super person just as far as being so kind,” Raymond said, speaking in the backyard of his Edmonton home in mid-January.
“He was always there to help other friends and other people too. That was Josh. He wouldn’t turn anybody down.”
Alberta has had a steady rise in drug poisoning deaths for nearly a decade and in 2016, the province began tracking overdose deaths, publishing quarterly reports. That year, 685 Albertans died by overdose followed by an additional 861 deaths in 2017, and 956 deaths in 2018. The number of deaths dipped in 2019 to 800 people before rising sharply to 1,358 in 2020.
Late Thursday, the Alberta government updated their online database with the latest numbers for 2021. A total of 1,758 Albertans died of drug poisoning last year, the deadliest year on record. Of those 1,602 were from an apparent opioid poisoning, or 91 per cent.In total, 6,418 Albertans have died.
Joshua was ultimately one of 136 Albertans who died from accidental drug poisoning in August 2021.
A medical examiner’s report later showed he had overdosed on Buprenorphine, an opioid that can be used to treat opioid use disorder and acute and chronic pain. Thorpe Recovery Centre declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing investigation into Joshua’s death. 
© Greg Southam Ray Corbiere lost his son Joshua to an overdose on Aug. 19, 2021.
Taken on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022 in Edmonton.
“He was too young,” said his father, tearfully. “Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children, it’s supposed to be the other way around.
“A huge part of my heart was just taken out. I miss my son every day.”
Pinpointing where overdoses happen
It is a common misconception that overdoses are only happening in the streets of Edmonton’s city centre.
But Alberta government data, tracking locations of opioid poisonings since 2016, shows the majority of deaths between 2018 and 2020 occurred in private residences, where the individual who died lived permanently. Previously published quarterly reports provided neighbourhood data and the number of overdoses in each. Since the second quarter of 2020, however, the province stopped location-specific data and now generalizes it in Alberta’s Substance Use Surveillance System .
More recently, the Edmonton Zone Medical Staff Association’s opioid poisoning committee asked that the province to release local geographical area data for opioid poisoning-related deaths and calls made to emergency medical services.
The committee believes such information would help mobilize resources and efforts in the community to reduce harm and death, and ensure those working on the front lines are where they need to be most.
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When Crystal Toronchuk gave birth to her son Zachary, she felt she had broken the mould. For her, it was a conscious decision to keep Zachary as an only child.
He graduated high school at 17 and was on his way to becoming an electrician after attending sessions at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT).
But in the middle of 2017, Crystal noticed her already tall and lanky son was starting to lose weight. By the end of October, the 20-year-old was distant and would make excuses to not attend family events. 
© David Bloom Crystal Toronchuk speaks about her son
Zachary’s 2017 fatal fentanyl overdose, in Edmonton on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022.
On Oct. 30, Zachary confessed he had done cocaine twice at a recent Halloween party.
“I trusted him that that was all that he had done,” Toronchuk said.
About a month later, Zachary came by the house insisting to speak with her, and admitted that he recently used what he believed was heroin two days before.
“My response was, ‘Well, that’s not a smart idea, is it?’ I was careful not to get mad and angry with him because with Zachary that would only push him farther away. And I wanted him to keep talking,” she said.
They talked for about an hour and a half. Crystal begged her son to spend the night with her, go to the hospital, do some research online and figure things out. But Zachary wanted to go home, where he lived with two roommates.
“I remember very clearly saying I love you, giving him a big hug, and watching him leave out the door.”
Crystal told him to call her in the morning and they would go out to Cora’s for breakfast. By 11 a.m., there was no call. She and her husband then repeatedly tried calling him. There was no answer.
Crystal soon made the 10-minute drive, in silence, to her son’s front door. A roommate answered, and said Zachary was sleeping upstairs.
“I said ‘Can you wake him up?’” Crystal said.
“His friend started coming downstairs and said he won’t wake up. I went to his room. And I found him… leaned up against his bed and he had passed.”
An overdose death like Zachary’s, on Nov. 30, 2017, can happen to anyone, anywhere, Crystal stressed.
“We live in an affluent neighbourhood on the south side, stereotypically ‘the burbs,’” she said.
“This is not what we’ve been taught to imagine what drug users look like, how drug users behave. This was very, very quick and extremely unexpected. It’s something I wish I could save every parent from ever having to feel.”
Between January and September 2017, 57 per cent of all drug poisonings recorded in Edmonton occurred in the same place that person called home, a home like Zachary’s.
© Greg Southam Sandy Wright’s son Colin LaFleur died
of a fentanyl poisoning on Dec. 14, 2020.
Taken on Sunday, Jan. 16, 2022 in Edmonton.
Dying alone
The second oldest among four boys, Colin LaFleur was charismatic, loved life, had a smile that would light up a room, his mother, Sandy Wright, recalls.
“I don’t think there is a picture … of me and Colin where we’re not hugging each other. He was always such a loving person,” said Wright outside her north Edmonton home.
He also had an addictive personality.
On Sunday, Dec. 13, 2020, after recently being released from Bowden Institution, the 35-year-old visited his mother’s house for coffee and a chat. The pair talked about what LaFleur’s future looked like — he had some money saved up and planned to look for a place of his own. He wanted to get his life back on track.
“As I always do with my children, my family and a lot of my close friends when they go to leave my house, I gave him a hug, a kiss and I told him I loved him. And as I always did with Colin, I was like ‘and behave yourself,’” Wright said.
“He told me he loved me too and he said ‘Mom, I’ll try.'”
He left for his father’s house, where he had been staying. Wright went to bed and happened to leave her cellphone ringer on. At 2:39 a.m. on Dec. 14, a Monday, she received a call from LaFleur’s dad.
“He just said ‘Sandy, it’s about Colin’ and I was like ‘what’s wrong?’ He goes, ‘Colin’s gone.’ I just lost it.”
Her son died in a 7-Eleven bathroom, alone.
LaFleur was among 1,351 Albertans to die of an accidental drug poisoning that year, a sharp climb from 800 in 2019.
“Drugs and alcohol were his bad demons and when he got on those, that’s when he got into trouble,” Wright said of the cycle that had continued for years.
But not every overdose victim has such a history.
Lindsey Gray had not used drugs for very long before dying at 33. Her mother, Faye Gray, says her daughter started hanging out with a group of people who introduced her to methamphetamine just two months prior to her death.
“I think she was looking for something other than what she had at that time, and it sort of snowballed,” Gray said.
For Halloween 2015, the pair took Lindsey’s four-year-old son out trick-or-treating and they spent the weekend together. It was the last time Faye would see her daughter.
On Nov. 2, 2015, police officers arrived at Faye’s door.
“She was found at the drug house and I didn’t know at the time how she died or anything,” said her mother.
Toxic supply
Lindsey didn’t know was there was fentanyl in the meth she was using.
“Once the autopsy was done, it was a lethal dose of fentanyl mixed in with the meth. So it wasn’t the meth that killed her it was the fentanyl that killed her,” said Faye. “Lindsey wasn’t a long-time user or anything like that. She started and then addiction set in and then that was it.
“If fentanyl wouldn’t have been around, I believe, I truly believe that she would still be here with us today.”
Lindsey died two years before the province officially began tracking opioid poisoning deaths.
However, in 2014, “accidental poisonings by and exposure to drugs and other biological substances” were the 30th leading cause of death for Albertans, at 201, according to Alberta government data.
“Poisonings by and exposure to drugs and biological substances with an undetermined intent” were the 13th leading cause of death, with 379 fatalities.
Faye talks about her daughter any chance she gets.
“I miss her a lot. Lindsey had a sense of humour that was unbelievable. And I think she got that from me, which is great,” Faye said, wearing a purple shirt with a photo of Lindsey and ‘Lindsey’s Mom’ printed on the back.
“(She was) always there for her friends. Family was really, really important to her.”
Recently, Lindsey’s son, who Faye now has custody of, said he could no longer remember her voice.
“I have a video of her doing (the ice bucket challenge). And so I showed that to him, ‘ah that’s mommy’s voice!’” Faye said.
What’s in a drug?
Oftentimes, people are unknowingly buying illicit substances laced with a drug that is more toxic. In some cases, they are under the impression they’re purchasing one thing but are in fact being sold something entirely different.
Currently, Alberta has no program in place for people to go to test and identify drugs before use.
When Zachary Toronchuk died, he thought he bought heroin. According to the medical examiner’s report, however, he had consumed fentanyl that included small traces of ketamine.
He was among 226 Edmontonians and 861 Albertans who died of an accidental drug poisoning in 2017.
“To this day, it angers both my husband and I extremely that someone was able to sell him fentanyl expecting to get another drug,” Crystal said.
Five years later, sitting in a park in southwest Edmonton, Crystal said Zachary’s death is still fresh. She can no longer work.
“I am severely depressed. I have been diagnosed with broken heart syndrome. I have pains in my chest constantly. This wasn’t just the act of Zachary using drugs and dying. This has lifelong issues,” Crystal said.
“I’ll never get to see him get married. I’ll never get to see him graduate from NAIT. I will never be a grandmother. I will never get to see the look on his face when he holds his children. None of that.”
LaFleur had also used what he believed to be heroin, a drug he was introduced to in jail. His toxicology report, however, concluded it was fentanyl.
“I think that people that are selling, that are lacing these drugs with fentanyl and stuff like that, to the point that they’re killed, should be charged with murder,” Wright said.
“Because it’s not an accidental overdose, it’s basically murder is how our family looks at it.”
‘You can’t help a dead person’
To address growing calls for safety, Alberta created a legislative committee to examine safe supply .
The committee’s mandate is, in part, to examine the concept of safe supply, as defined as providing pharmaceutical opioids, heroin, crystal meth, cocaine, and other substances and whether that would have an impact on overdoses, drug diversion, or associated health and community impacts.
It is also exploring whether safe supply will increase risks to individuals, the community, or other entities or jurisdictions.
Critics , however, have concerns the committee has a predetermined outcome . The committee is to provide a report with recommendations by April 30.
For families who have had loved ones die of an overdose, providing a safe supply and opening more supervised consumption sites are just a few avenues to halting more deaths.
As Faye puts it: “You can’t help a dead person, they’re already gone.
“Once the addiction takes over … unless you can get help from a professional it’s almost too late like it was for Lindsey,” Faye said.
© David Bloom Crystal Toronchuk speaks about her son Zachary’s 2017 fatal fentanyl overdose, in Edmonton on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022.
Crystal Toronchuk says treatment won’t work unless the addict is ready.
“The only thing that we can do is try to walk with them and support them as much as we possibly can. Until they’re able to make that decision on their own,” she said.
“My ultimate dream would be that there would be safe consumption sites everywhere in Edmonton.
“Drugs are available to children as young as junior high, still in the suburbs, as they are in the downtown core. We need places for people to go so that they can trust going somewhere, a place that will care for them and understand them and help them.”
Wright stresses that drug users are not just expendable.
“They have families, people that love them, people that care about them. They’re not just throwaways to society,” Wright said.
“So many of these people are good, upstanding citizens that have a disease. And it’s a disease. It’s not something you can say, well, you know, you can be clean for a month, and then you can come back and see me.
“That’s like somebody telling cancer patients don’t have cancer for a month and then you can come and see me. It’s a disease, they need help.”
‘These are not safe drugs’
Ultimately, Joshua Corbiere did try to get help.
The 25-year-old loved music, especially rap. He even named his cat Notorious, after the rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
Joshua also had a love for food and his family always told him he should become a chef. But Joshua decided to go another route, following his grandfather’s footsteps — he got a job at CP Rail working with the railway company for about two years as a railway track maintainer.
“CP Rail was really, really good to him. They supported him. He went to rehab, through CP Rail,” his father, Raymond said.
Starting with marijuana, Joshua began using drugs when he was in high school. He then got involved in gang activity, which lead to more drug use and even stronger drugs, including cocaine.
© Greg Southam Ray Corbiere lost his son Joshua to an
overdose on Aug. 19, 2021. Taken on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022, in Edmonton.
He entered rehab in December 2020 at Thorpe Recovery Centre and when he got out, he was doing well, his father says. But he relapsed after being introduced to a group of people at the centre who were gang-affiliated.
“(He) went back into that gang life,” Raymond said.
Nevertheless, Joshua wanted to try rehab again.
“He wanted to go. He said these drugs are killing him,” Raymond said.
About a month before he died, Joshua and his father visited Slave Lake for the first time together. He fondly recalls Joshua hanging out by the water; he loved to swim. It’s a favourite memory Raymond has of his son.
“All these families that are getting destroyed because of all these drugs that are in the system. These are not safe drugs. For what was supposed to be a safe place. It was not,” he said.
“I was told by many people, there’s no safe drugs out there. There’s no safe cocaine or whatever drug these children these adults, parents, brothers, sisters, aunts uncles are taking. It’s just very, very disheartening to see how many people are suffering. And our family is suffering.”
ajunker@postmedia.com
@JunkerAnna
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the updated overdose death numbers for 2021.
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