Two women are dead after being found during separate wellness checks Sunday as parts of Quebec were left without power with deep cold and snowfall setting in.
The death of 87-year-old Sheila Padmore is now being investigated by a Quebec coroner. The resident of Beaconsfield Ave in NDG was suffering from hypothermia, according a neighbour who was with her after she was transported to hospital. Dawn Lambing says she brought Padmore’s husband, 91-year-old Calvin Bacchus, to the McGill University Health Centre to see his wife on Sunday night.
“The doctor called us in right away, and he told us that she had hypothermia. Her body core temperature was 22 degrees, and she had a heart attack in the ambulance. Her heart stopped,” Lambing told Global News.
Accompanied by police, Lambing and another neighbour say they checked on the elderly couple around 9:30pm Sunday night. The pair had been inside their home without power for nearly two days.
Lambing describes finding Sheila on the floor. An Urgences-santé spokesperson told Global News an elderly woman was transported to hospital from a Beaconsfield Avenue home in critical condition.
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Padmore died overnight. Lambing says she got the news from doctors and informed the woman’s husband.
“I got the call this morning that she passed away in the night. I took him up some coffee, and I had to tell him that, you know, his wife was dead,” she said through tears. Neighbours say the couple has grown increasingly vulnerable, and have no family in Montreal. Lambing helped Bacchus check into a hotel Monday afternoon.
Hydro was gradually being restored in NDG and Cote-Saint-Luc Monday after a power outage impacted roughly 15,000 households. About 2,000 homes and businesses were still in the dark Monday morning.
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Residents were left scrambling to stay warm and protect their properties as the temperature dipped below -20C over the weekend; Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning for Montreal on Sunday afternoon given 15 to 25 centimetres of snow could fall by Monday evening.
On Monday, it said an additional five to 10 centimetres of snow could be expected.
Frustration has been rising among residents without power for over 48 hours.
“We know it’s cold outside, it’s not a perfect situation and our crews are working day and night to restore the problem,” said Hydro-Quebec spokesperson Pascal Poinlane.
He refused to comment on Padmore’s death having learned about it from Global News.
Poinlane explained that Hydro Quebec has installed generators around the area as they continue working to solve a major breaker failure at the aging Hampstead Substation.
The issue caused a transformer to break, preventing teams from routing electricity from elsewhere on the network.
“This is not a third world country, but it’s behaving like one now,” said NDG resident Marcella Miller, who has left her cold, dark home to stay with her daughter.
Authorities were conducting a neighbourhood wellness check on Sunday when they found a 66-year-old woman dead inside her home on Hudson Avenue in Montreal West.
Her cause of death remains unknown; Montreal police said there was nothing to suggest her death was the result of a criminal act.
The coroner is investigating both deaths.
— with files from Brayden Jagger Haines
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