David Lemire’s father Victorin was shoveling snow during a big storm on March 16, when he started to feel unwell.

He went into his home in St-Bruno-de-Guigues, located in Quebec’s Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, and sat down. He looked at Lemire’s mother, told her he didn’t feel well, and then he collapsed. 

Lemire’s younger brother called 911 multiple times as his father lay unconscious. The call kept getting routed to Ontario, though, which sits on the other side of Lake Témiscamingue.

“[My brother] didn’t really understand what was going on,” Lemire said. “[The operator] didn’t understand the address.”

On a third attempt, his brother managed to reach a French-speaking operator who transferred the call to the correct dispatch centre.

By the time paramedics arrived, Lemire estimates roughly 50 minutes had passed from the first 911 call.

“My mother and brother tried to resuscitate him for about half an hour before anyone arrived,” Lemire said.

Despite the paramedics doing an “exceptional job,” according to Lemire, they were unable to save his father, who died from a heart attack. 

“We have so many questions,” Lemire said. “There are so many ‘what ifs.’”

“We don’t know if he would have survived … if [the call] had gone directly to Quebec. Maybe he’d still be alive.”

Why are 911 calls getting misrouted?

The issue of 911 calls being misrouted is reportedly a common occurrence on both sides of the Ontario-Quebec border — particularly around Lake Témiscamingue, which sits between the two provinces.

The reason is multi-faceted, according to Pierre-Luc Gingras, a supervisor at the Abitibi-Témiscamingue emergency call centre.

“It can be caused by weather conditions, by obstructions between the tower and the cellphone, or by the orientation of antennas on cellular towers,” Gingras said.

“It also depends on location. Is the person indoors or outdoors? Are there materials in the building that reflect signals? For example, a metal roof can block or interfere with certain …cellular signals.”

All these elements can result in the system detecting a stronger signal from an Ontario tower over a Quebec one, he said.

Plus there’s also the fact, Gingras says, that there are fewer cellular towers on the Quebec side than the Ontario side. 

Preventing another ‘tragic situation’

In addition to the technical factors that can impact an emergency response, there can also be a language barrier Quebec callers may face if connected with a 911 operator in Ontario, where bilingualism isn’t a requirement of the job.

“The problem is that for unilingual French speakers, they’re often unable to understand,” said Michel Vaillant, the mayor of Notre-Dame-du-Nord, Que., located just a couple kilometres from the Ontario border. 

In the case of the Lemire family, language wasn’t the issue. 

It was a “very tragic situation,” the mayor said. He wants citizens to be informed of what to do if it happens again.

He advises anyone in the region with a landline to use it when calling 911 — instead of a cell phone.

For those calling 911 from a cell phone who get misrouted to Ontario, Vaillant says they should tell the operator: “Transfer [to] 911 Quebec.” 

With an upcoming rollout of Next Gen 911 service, or 911 de prochaine génération NG9-1-1, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, calls will be geolocated and the issue should no longer occur, according to the mayor.

While he’s optimistic that this process may take only several months, officials at the Abitibi-Témiscamingue emergency call center believe it will be longer than that. 

“We’re really talking more about several years, realistically,” said Gingras, a supervisor at the emergency call centre.

Meanwhile, as David Lemire and his family continues to grieve, they hope sharing their story “can help prevent this from happening again.”