Speakers Bureau speaker

Luc was an activist and committed speaker for Speakers Bureau when he passed away at the age of 50. His sister Lia published a powerful piece in the Vancouver Sun in honour of Luc.

" But he was an Indigenous man. And he died just days after the revelation that 215 children’s bodies were found buried on the grounds of what had been a residential school in Kamloops. One of his health issues was that he suffered from acute anxiety. When he heard the news, our mother had to go to him and calm him. He had misunderstood: Luc thought a mass grave had been found. He thought that 215 children had all died at the same time and were thrown into a huge grave.

But the fact is, his life experience gave him little reason not to jump to that conclusion. It didn’t seem outlandish or implausible to him. And knowing it was 215 separate, unmarked graves. Of children. How much better was that? Not a lot.

The health battles Luc waged over the years slowly wore his body down. Each time he recovered from pneumonia, or an infection, or a relapse into addiction, he recovered weaker than he was before. Nevertheless, I think it was the news of the residential school graves that taxed his system beyond its breaking point"...The remainder of the Vancouver Sun article can be found here.