Doctor found alive in Ontario bush

After two-and-a-half days spent cold and wet in the Northern Ontario bush, Dr. Michael Monture said it was the suffering and desperation he saw in the remote reserve of Pikangikum that prompted him to set out on a spiritual quest for help.
While his motives were personal, the physician unwittingly drew the country’s attention to one small native community’s desperate plight in a way that years of suicide, poverty, and social turmoil did not.
“I was concerned and frustrated at the lack of resources,” he told The Canadian Press at his home in Sioux Lookout yesterday, one day after provincial police pulled him alive from dense bush 11 km northeast of Pikangikum, which lies about 300 km northeast of Winnipeg.
Monture, a Mohawk from Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ont., said he set out Wednesday night from the reserve of 2,000 after spending three frustrating days trying to put a Band-Aid on what he described as a gaping wound.
“What galvanized me was how people were lacking in basic food and necessities,” he said. “It’s not a question of what you’re going to eat, it’s whether you’re going to eat.”
Monture said he was never suicidal, nor did he go into the bush to garner public attention.
“I’m sure there are those who would say I was just doing it for fame or profit,” he said. “I hope that the message gets out that I’m not some crazed suicidal lunatic wandering around in the woods with a knife to his throat.”
Rather, he was on a mission prompted by the grim conditions in the Oji-Cree village, where clean water hasn’t flowed from taps since last year, where the school is closed, where residents say a battle with Indian Affairs has left the band with dwindling funds, and where the suicide rate is the highest in the world.
Pikangikum Chief Louie Quill said Saturday that, however inadvertant, Monture’s disappearance indeed had helped raise the community’s profile–and its spirits.
“He did something for the community that some of us only dream of doing—by taking this on on his own,” he said. “He got a chance to bring the community together.”
Residents, apparently overwhelmed by Monture’s actions, circled around him as he prepared to fly off the reserve Saturday night, reaching out to touch him as though he were a hero.
Pikangikum has made the news in recent weeks because of Indian Affairs minister Robert Nault’s controversial decision to take over the band’s finances–even though leaders had never allowed its budget to run a deficit.
But the community’s profile has remained relatively low, despite that and despite the shocking declaration last November by international experts that Pikangikum has the highest-known suicide rate in the world.
Three young women have killed themselves in the last month alone since Nault handed the finances over to a third-party manager in London, Ont. on May 17.
Last year, nine desperate young women took their lives on the reserve—the worst year to date.
Monture, 42, one of only a handful of native doctors practising in Canada, yesterday described his own sense of hopelessness when he made the decision to take seven garbage bags, a roll of duct tape bought at the local store for $16, two bottles of water, and a can of salmon into the woods.
“The most common concern was the lack of food. What am I supposed to do—write a prescription for food for these people?” he asked.
Milk on the reserve costs $10 a litre–five times what it costs in most other parts of the country. Fresh fruit and vegetables are rare. When available, these staples usually are too expensive to buy.
On his most recent visit to the reserve, Monture gave up his own food to feed those who were most hungry.
“I can’t go in there and watch people starve,” he said. “Obviously my training as a physician is not going to do anything.”
Along with a shortage of food, Monture decried a lack of other key necessities—clean water to drink and decent housing.
“If the government wanted to bring in 50 housing units tomorrow, they could do it,”he said. “If they wanted to bring in an up-to-date water treatment facility, [they could do that] too.”
He said the community dump is overflowing, and described seeing young children huddled near a burning pile of refuse.
“They have a fire going in the garbage dump to keep warm while looking for things to eat,” he said. “It’s very upsetting to think that this is Canada.”
After a dinner Wednesday with local residents, Monture decided to set out into the night to “offer his prayers for the people of Pikangikum” before boarding a flight out of the community the next morning.
After getting “turned around” in the bush, Monture said he fashioned long underwear out of a foil blanket. He did not sleep but lay curled up in a ball to conserve heat in the wet, near-zero weather.
He never thought he would die, he said, but knew he was at risk.