Update May 30, 2022 – A hearing was held today in B.C. Supreme Court of Island Health’s application for an order to seal documents and ban publication of information about their apprehension and detention of Eileen Wicks. Island Health’s lawyer, Melissa Perry, revealed that there was confusion about whether another publication ban order had apparently been granted to Island Health several weeks ago in B.C. Provincial Court, whether it was actually an order or just a “direction,” and that one or both lawyers may not have actually heard the BCPC judge make such an order.
The judge presiding in B.C. Supreme Court on May 30 noted that Island Health had referenced the Provincial Court publication ban order, but not submitted a copy with their court application. Justice Robin Baird asked Island Health’s lawyer if she had a copy for him. She said she did not, admitting that she had not yet filed the order. To date, we have not seen a copy of the Provincial Court publication ban order.
However, an order to seal documents and ban publication of all current and future affidavits and court orders, and certain personal or medical information about Eileen Wicks was granted by Justice Baird in B.C. Supreme Court on May 30, 2022, but the details are to be worked out by the lawyers of the respective parties. Apparently the order is not a “blanket ban.”
Eileen and Trevor Wicks’ 55th wedding anniversary is Friday, June 3, 2022.
Update May 28, 2022 – This article was temporarily removed on May 24. READ more here about why this article is once again available to the public.
May 23, 2022 – Breaking News
Island Health seeks publication ban in Eileen Wicks case
Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) has applied to B.C. Supreme Court seeking orders to “prohibit the publication of any information which would tend to identify Eileen Wicks,” and to seal all current and future affidavits and evidence — including “all [court] orders.”
Melissa Perry of Norton Rose Fulbright, the law firm representing Island Health, had previously “objected” to Second Opinion QB publishing “personal information” about Eileen Wicks, claiming that Trevor Wicks, in so doing, is violating the B.C. Representation Agreement Act. Eileen appointed her husband Trevor Wicks as her Representative and Power of Attorney.
All of the information published about the Wicks by Second Opinion QB has been provided either from public records and information obtained through interviews and research, or with the consent of Eileen and Trevor Wicks. All related analysis and opinions are our own.
People who wish to support Eileen Wicks should contact their MLAs (elected Members of the B.C. Legislature), Adrian Dix, B.C. Minister of Health and the B.C. Premier John Horgan to voice their concerns about Island Health, aka VIHA. Please send a copy of any written correspondence to Second Opinion QB.
READ pages 1-2 of Island Health’s Notice of Application below, which specify the court orders sought.
May 20, 2022 – Island Health is attempting an end-run in the courts, seemingly to evade, or avoid defending themselves against, the petition filed by Eileen Wicks’ lawyer in B.C. Supreme Court on April 28, 2022.
Instead of providing their requisite submissions in response to Eileen Wicks’ “habeas corpus” petition, a week later Island Health filed a separate court application in Provincial Court to obtain an order against the Wicks under Part 3 of B.C.’s Adult Guardianship Act.
The habeas corpus petition asks the Court to order the immediate release of Eileen Wicks on the grounds that Eileen’s apprehension and continued detention are unlawful and in breach of her rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A copy of the habeas corpus petition is provided in our previous story about Eileen and her husband Trevor Wicks.
Island Health is seeking a Provincial Court order to impose their “Support and Assistance Plan” (SAP) on Eileen and Trevor Wicks without their consent. Island Health’s proposed plan states that Eileen must be placed in long-term care, and that Eileen and Trevor Wicks’ daughter, Sharon Tomcyzk, be given sole legal authority to make decisions for her mother, replacing Eileen’s husband Trevor who is Eileen’s current legally appointed Power of Attorney and health and personal care Representative.
After reviewing hundreds of pages of affidavits submitted by Island Health and other evidence, Second Opinion QB discovered a web of speculation, innuendo, hearsay, contradictions and unsubstantiated allegations by Island Health that seems to have been spun around a fictional narrative launched by a third party, whose identity has finally become evident.
Curiously, Island Health has submitted no affidavits from any medical doctor. In our last issue, Second Opinion QB noted that Island Health falsely identified two assessors as doctors, Deborah O’Connor and Jenny Tang (whose services were arranged by the Public Guardian and Trustee at the request of Island Health). Neither is a medical doctor, and neither have submitted sworn affidavits.
The affidavits included in Island Health’s court application were sworn by social workers and nurses working at Oceanside Health Centre in Parksville, BC and at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, and by Sharon Tomcyzk, the Wicks’ daughter, who claims to be training to become a social worker.
Cherry-picked records, hearsay, unsubstantiated allegations but no “smoking gun”
“It’s not true. I never said that,” says Trevor Wicks. He repeats this over and over when asked about various statements he and Eileen have allegedly made, according to sworn affidavits submitted by Island Health. Wicks, who once believed that this “nightmare” was all a misunderstanding, now, after reviewing Island Health’s affidavits, believes “this is a set-up.”
Island Health has provided no video, audio or other documented proof of their claims about what Trevor or Eileen Wicks are purported to have said, with the exception of two brief audio recordings with Eileen Wicks which we review later in this story.
Before we take a look at some of the claims in Island Health’s court submission, readers should be reminded that B.C.’s Adult Guardianship Act gives health care providers complete immunity for their actions, as long as they claim they were acting in good faith. In other words, there are no consequences or repercussions for lying or wrong-doing — certainly no meaningful consequences that would deter such conduct in the future. Section 60.1 of the Adult Guardianship Act proclaims the following:
The relentless road to a brutal apprehension and detention
As far as can be determined (without the complete set of Eileen Wicks’ records which Island Health has still not provided), this is how this inordinately vicious and destructive Keystone Cop fiasco appears to have gone down.
Island Health affidavits state that, in June 2020, the Wicks’ daughter, Sharon Tomcyzk, was in contact with the Oceanside Health Centre in Parksville to report that her parents had a “murder-suicide pact.” She contacted social worker Andree Jove and a geriatric psychiatrist with Island Health’s geriatric services (GSS), Dr. Pawel Juralowicz.
According to Dr. Juralowicz, Ms. Tomczyk told him in their phone call that Trevor had “developed a plan for the future that he was going to sell the house, probably next year [2021], buy a mobile home and, at the time when his wife deteriorates, kill her and then commit suicide himself.”
However, the affidavits show that neither the social worker nor Dr. Juralowicz thought that the daughter’s allegations warranted any particular intervention at the time. Months of inaction followed.
In 2021, new staff were assigned to the Wicks’ case and, for some as yet unknown reason, the GSS team suddenly increased their presence in the Wicks’ lives, including bi-weekly wellness checks.
The affidavits reveal that the social workers and nurses assigned were not there to provide respite, but to interrogate Eileen and Trevor about their alleged “murder-suicide pact” — and to snoop around their home to see if there was a for sale sign or motor home outside or whether they were packing boxes inside, all apparently things that indicate seniors are planning to end their lives. “Eileen just got fed up hearing them bring it up every time they were here. It upset her,” says Trevor.
The Oceanside Health Centre (OHC) formed a big team and kicked into high gear, holding meetings through the fall of 2021 to plan how to apprehend Eileen and ensure that Trevor would be stripped of his rights to make decisions on Eileen’s behalf. These “care” conferences as case worker Maeris Boudreau called them, increased in frequency and intensity through December and into the new year, culminating in the shocking apprehension of Eileen and Trevor Wicks on January 12, 2022.
Yet, all the while, up to and including the couple’s last appointment with him on December 16, 2021, the most qualified person to comment on Eileen and Trevor, Dr. Juralowicz, steadfastly maintained that there was no imminent danger to Eileen or concern about Trevor.
Suddenly, on January 10, 2022, for no reason apparent in the affidavits submitted by Island Health, Dr. Juralowicz issued a brief paragraph stating that Eileen was now suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. That declaration was apparently used by the “care team” to green light the apprehension of the Wicks.
None of Island Health’s jumbled, shifting, contradictory narrative makes sense to Trevor Wicks. “Why would I care for Eileen for ten years if I wanted to kill her? Why would I be visiting Eileen, traveling thousands of kilometers back and forth to Nanaimo in all kinds of weather, trying to make her life in jail more bearable, if I wanted to kill her? Why would she continue to phone me literally dozens of times every day, saying ‘Trevor, I miss you,’ if she feared me or hated me?” Visits to the Wicks’ home by the writer confirm that Eileen calls Trevor frequently with such messages.
Island Health’s confused and unnecessarily confusing MAID muddle – a red herring
In our review of their affidavits, Island Health appears to have created a whirl of confusion around the relevance of the federal law governing medical assistance in dying (MAID). The current law is clear. An adult must have the cognitive capacity to provide informed consent at the moment a physician, using drugs, at the person’s request, hastens the adult’s death.
Yet, Island Health’s affidavits also reveal that Trevor and Eileen Wicks appear to have taken all of the steps suggested to seniors to ensure their final years will go as well as can be, including with respect to Eileen Wicks’ dementia diagnosis.
Trevor Wicks, having had regular interaction with the Alzheimer’s Society and Dying with Dignity, understands the existing MAID law, and knows that there is a recognized need for revisions to the law to accommodate advanced directives from persons who are at risk of losing future capacity to give consent. A Special Joint (House of Commons and Senate) Committee of Parliament is currently conducting a statutory review of Medical Assistance in Dying for that purpose.
In July 2020, Dr. Benjamin Martens, a GP at Oceanside Health Centre (OHC), performed a “MAID” assessment of Eileen via video-conference, at the request of her family doctor Dr. Jacques Simenhoff, and concluded that “this patient [Eileen] meets the criteria for medical assistance in dying.” This, of course, was not true because she did not meet the essential criteria of, for example, intolerable physical pain or psychological suffering, irremediable condition, etc., nor any of the specific criteria in her own advance medical directives.
While she may have been capable of asking for and consenting to MAID, it was not actionable until “an as-of-yet undetermined point in the future.”
A few weeks later, on August 26, 2020 Eileen was “MAID assessed” again, this time at the Wicks’ home by another Oceanside Health Centre (OHC) doctor, Dr. Jacqueline Siedlecki, who assessed Eileen “as eligible for MAID at present.”
A year later, in September 2021, Dr. Martens apparently decided that Eileen was no longer eligible for MAID, but provides no substantiation to support his declaration. Neither Eileen nor Trevor were informed that she was no longer officially “approved” for MAID until weeks after their apprehension.
Regardless, these declarations about eligibility for MAID were irrelevant. Any such “approval” simply meant that Eileen, at that point in time, had the cognitive capacity to choose to end her life using MAID but ONLY IF and WHEN her life became intolerable, according to a list of conditions she herself had identified (intolerable physical or psychological pain, irremediable condition etc.) Eileen Wicks’ life was not intolerable in 2020 or 2021. Indeed, her life may never become intolerable according to her criteria for many years, if ever — assuming she soon returns home to her healthy environment.
Meanwhile, according to their affidavit submissions, multiple Island Health staff wound themselves into a tizzy last fall wringing their hands about whether to tell the Wicks that MAID was not an option right now, something the Wicks already knew, understood well and, rightly considered irrelevant to their current well-being. The couple believed they had done everything right, and that the doctors they had consulted to set up a provision for MAID in the future had registered her request, as required.
On January 6, 2022, a multitude of Island Health staff amped up their imagined and artificial crisis, intervened brutally and unnecessarily and, since then, have been scrambling in an exercise of “decision-based evidence-making” to try to justify their questionable processes and assumptions, inadequate investigation and bad choices.
Daughter kept parents in the dark about her interactions with Island Health
Only after receiving Island Health’s affidavits did Trevor and Eileen Wicks learn that the brutal apprehension and months of Eileen’s detention were instigated by their daughter Sharon Tomcyzk, and that she had been privately colluding with Island Health for several years.
It is evident from the affidavits that Sharon Tomcyzk is the person who stoked Island Health’s malfeasance. It also appears that Ms. Tomcyzk was the author of the phrase “murder-suicide pact.” Trevor Wicks states that he has never used that term to describe their plans for the remaining years of their lives.
One example of their daughter’s efforts to conceal her intentions and actions is illustrated by this post by Sharon Tomcyzk to Trevor Wicks’ Facebook page — the day after the couple was apprehended.
Ms. Tomczyk’s affidavit, submitted in support of Island Health’s court application, contains many negative comments about her father Trevor Wicks, as do her comments to Island Health in the years and months leading up to the decision to apprehend her parents.
Sharon Tomcyzk is also in complete agreement with Island Health’s plan to put her mother into long-term care. According to Island Health’s records, Ms. Tomcyzk said she is too busy to care for her mother, presumably because she is in training to become a social worker. In a conversation with her in January 2022, Ms. Tomczyk also told this writer that she was “too busy,” and that Eileen would be better off in long-term care because “at least I’d know where she is.”
Colluding to coerce Eileen
An audio recording is Included in Island Health’s court documents of a staff meeting with Eileen on February 22, 2022 to review their proposed Support and Assistance Plan (SAP) for which they are now seeking a court order to enforce. The objective of that meeting was to present their plan to Eileen, and then to ask if Eileen would consent to it or not.
The audio starts after the meeting has already begun so it is not known if or how social worker Julie Speers, who led the meeting, and nurse Lorraine Kirk who was also present, clearly and fully explained the reason, purpose and implications of the SAP to Eileen. It soon becomes apparent that this “meeting” is being held in Eileen’s room, and that Sharon Tomcyzk is also present. Social worker Julie Speers makes a point of commenting about how glad she is that Sharon Tomcyzk “just happened to be here,” while the meeting was being conducted, how “it just worked out that way.”
During this pivotal, critical meeting, Sharon is heard encouraging her mother, using tactics akin to a time-share salesperson, to accept Island Health’s plan to put her into long-term care (Eagle Park). “You know that little cottage you talked about all those years? This is kind of like that,” says Sharon to Eileen, bizarrely equating living in a long-term care facility with life in an English cottage. Then, social worker Julie tells Eileen that Eagle Park “is the best decision.” A few minutes later, at about the 9-minute mark, the “meeting” takes on the feel of a jovial tea party. When one of Eileen’s granddaughters, Jasmine, also just coincidentally pops in, she too enthusiastically agrees that grandma should go to live in a long-term care facility.
LISTEN to Island Health “staff meeting” with Eileen — Exhibit G Audio Recording – 20220222_ Support and Assistance Plan NRGH
A second audio was also submitted to court, this one of a conversation between Sharon and Eileen in July 2020. In this conversation, Sharon encourages Eileen to comment on statements Sharon makes about her father Trevor. Like the other audio recording, this one also does not reveal the beginning of the conversation, making it impossible to know how the topic(s) of the conversation emerged or how the discussion may have been framed. It also begs the question why a daughter would record such a conversation with her mother.
Daughter who alleges “murder-suicide pact” received over $300,000 from her parents
“Who would have thought our lives would end up like this?” says Trevor Wicks in a rare reflective moment, shaking his head at the revelations in Island Health’s affidavits. “It’s painful,” he says, to learn of his daughter’s actions.
Although not close to her, the couple have been generous to their only remaining child Sharon and her two children. Trevor Wicks says that, about six years ago, he and Eileen sold their home to their daughter Sharon Tomcyzk for several hundred thousand dollars below assessed value. In addition, he says that just in the last two years, the couple gave $70,000 to Sharon and $50,000 to their two adult granddaughters to help them out.
A review of their court documents reveals that Island Health cast aspersions on the Wicks for disposing of their assets, presuming this was a “sign” that the Wicks were going to end their lives imminently. Oddly, the social workers and nurses who were seemingly pouring over every little detail of the Wicks’ lives, neglected to ascertain what assets, where the assets were going, or who might have been reaping the benefits of the Wicks “asset disposal.”
Taking the high road
Meanwhile, Trevor Wicks, not comprehending the internecine complexities and legalities that Island Health staff are so comfortable wielding, and despairing at the harm Eileen is continuing to experience, tries to “take the high road,” to free his wife in the best way he knows how, pleading with the public and the authorities for compassion and reason to prevail, as evidenced by his latest online effort, Walk4Eileen, to demonstrate the loving, active life the couple have led and still hope to enjoy.
While Island Health, the RCMP and the B.C. government may try to frame this as a “family dispute,” the Wicks’ daughter could not have caused these horrific harms to her parents without the overt or implicit approval and willing engagement by authorities.
Island Health bears full responsibility and liability for the brutal, unnecessary home invasion and abduction of Eileen and Trevor Wicks, and the senseless, cruel confinement to a tiny hospital room of a woman coping with a common cognitive impairment for over four months, alone most of the time, with the exception of paid monitors who are present during Trevor’s visits, and who offend Eileen by bring her coloring books and crayons to pass the time while they, to Eileen’s irritation, sit a few feet away from her, scrolling through their cell phones.
Two days ago, on May 18, 2022 in B.C. Provincial Court, Island Health attempted to get a court order to force Eileen into “interim long-term care” pending the actual court hearing — another attempt to end-run the habeas corpus petition that Eileen’s lawyer filed in B.C. Supreme Court seeking her immediate release. The Court denied Island Health’s request. The next step is to set a date for the habeas corpus hearing in B.C. Supreme Court.