Posted yesterday at 5:00am
Philippe Mercure La Presse
Operating her camera, on this beautiful Friday in June 2019, Charlene Vacon has no reason to believe that she is taking the very last photograph of her eldest son.
Archie is particularly radiant this afternoon. He is 19 years old. He just got his driver’s license. He’s started a summer job at the Styrochem expanded polystyrene (Styrofoam) plant in Baie-D’Urfé — a job that prepares him for the industrial engineering degree he will begin at Concordia University in the fall.
“I was sitting here on the terrace,” her mother said three years after the events, pointing to the courtyard of the house in Saint-Lazare. “Archie ran down the stairs. He came home from work and he was still covered in all those little styrofoam balls. He had a thousand and one things to say about his day. »
Archie confides in him that he feels useful at work. He begins to connect with his peers. On the same day he helped organize a barbecue at the factory.
Attracted by communist ideas, he then read a book written by Lenin, which deals in particular with work in the factory.
He told me about this book that it was the best book he had read. I took a picture of him because he looked so cheerful.
Charlene Vacon, mother of Archibald Lévis MacIsaac-Vacon
In the evening, after dinner at home, Archie heads to Montreal to party with friends at a bar on Saint-Laurent Boulevard. During the night, one of them finds Archie unconscious on the toilet.
His death was recorded at 4:20 a.m. on June 29, 2019. Three bags were found near the young man – two empty and one full. This is analyzed. It contains fentanyl.
The coroner concludes it was fentanyl and alcohol poisoning.
Boundless curiosity
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
To this day, Charlene Vacon and Rob MacIsaac do not know if their son took fentanyl on purpose to experience its effects, or if he accidentally took this powerful opioid thinking he was taking another drug.
Today, Archie’s parents blame his insatiable curiosity for their son’s death.
Philosophy, religions, astronomy, chemistry: Archie was interested in everything from a young age. He writes small pamphlets on a myriad of subjects – including one, at the age of 14, on opioids. As a teenager, he began learning Japanese and Greek and volunteered for the NDP.
“When he was curious about something, he would do all the research needed to become an expert. I still donate $50 a year to Wikipedia because it’s been his source of entertainment for many years,” says his father, Rob MacIsaac.
Between 2015 and 2018, her mother, Charlene, took on an emergency service mandate for the Alberta government. She was at the forefront of witnessing the opioid crisis that was beginning to spread across western Canada.
“When I came back we had good conversations with the children about drugs and that there are new risks from the substances that contaminate them,” says Ms Vacon.
Despite this, Archie’s parents suspect that their son is experimenting alone. You don’t care too much. After all, the young man has friends, is doing well at school and bites his life.
Only after his death do they discover envelopes from Ontario in his room, presumably ordered from the deep web.
“We found that his drug adventures ran deeper than we thought,” says his father, who refuses to blame a bad influence.
“Archie was the one in the band who was interested. He was the one doing the research. The night he died, he went to the bathroom alone to do his things while the others did other things,” he notes.
To this day, Charlene Vacon and Rob MacIsaac do not know if their son took fentanyl on purpose to experience its effects, or if he accidentally took this powerful opioid thinking he was taking another drug.
“We don’t know, and we’re not trying to find out,” his mother sighs. Somehow he took fentanyl, too much fentanyl. Some are angry at the drug dealer, at the police. We are not angry with anyone. In the current context in Canada, that is exactly what is happening. »
But they can’t help but think that if the stigma surrounding drugs hadn’t been so strong, their son might not have had to hide in a bar toilet to have his experience.
And might have survived the juvenile mistake that stole his life.