Family pushing for change after teacher died of heat stroke on the job

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Darcee Gosselin died on one of the hottest days of the year in one of the hottest places in Manitoba, doing what she loved — helping her students.

On May 5, 2016, at the Spirit Sands in Spruce Woods Provincial Park, four hours into a field trip, the beloved 40-year-old John Taylor Collegiate teacher collapsed and died. That evening, her parents, Vicki and Perry Gosselin, drove to the hospital in Carberry, unaware their daughter was already dead.

The family — brother Kelly and his wife, Lana Gosselin, sister Erin Simpson and her husband, who prefers not to be named — is still devastated, but they say they’re also angry their questions to education officials have gone unanswered for more than a year, and angry heat policies for field trips have not changed in ways that could save another student or teacher.

She is thought to be the only Manitoba teacher who has died while supervising a school field trip. When two young students died on field trips in the last 15 years, there were extensive investigations, a three-week inquest, and massive overhauls of rules and processes.

After the death of Darcee, there’s been nothing like that.

“The school division didn’t help us with anything,” Vicki Gosselin said recently. “Absolutely nothing.”

The family believes people in the St. James-Assiniboia School Division have been told not to talk to them. They’ve only received a short summary of a 500-page workplace safety and health report on Darcee’s death, and have been told to keep it confidential — though it’s now in the hands of their lawyer.

Above all, they want people to know who Darcee was, how she died, and why her death should force systemic change to save others.

Darcee worked in a bank, she studied psychology, and then a decade ago, “she just all of a sudden, she decided to be a teacher,” said Vicki. Darcee had been at John Taylor for 10 years, her first and only school.

“She could talk to (students), joke around with them,” said Simpson. “Science was her passion.”

“She was always involved in sports, managing, coaching,” Perry remembered.

Her students affectionately called her Mama G and the Wizard of Goz, chuckled Vicki. Darcee was the teacher supervisor for safe grad every year. “She did have a lot of rapport with them.”

And so it was no surprise Darcee went on the school field trip, even though she wasn’t involved in any of the course work that took the 21 Grades 11 and 12 students to Spruce Woods.

“She volunteered,” said Erin. “They needed a female, and no one else stepped up. She knew it would be cancelled if she didn’t go.”

It was a very hot May day, so hot that the family has heard a thermometer within the park hit 40C that afternoon. Officially, Environment Canada lists that day’s high at 33.7 in Brandon-Carberry — how hot it got in the Spirit Sands’ desert-like conditions in the blazing sun is unknown.

Vicki and Perry drove to the hospital in Carberry that evening, not knowing Darcee was dead. They were unaware the principal was already in Carberry and had arranged for the spouses of the other two supervising teachers to come, too. The students on the field trip had long since gone home by bus, apparently not told of the gravity of Darcee’s condition.

The principal had had a teacher track down Simpson after being unable to reach Perry and Vicki. “I got a call from a teacher, one of her best friends,” said Simpson. “All she said was something happened, she was OK, but they needed to get her parents.”

The autopsy was conducted the next day. Vicki got a call from a medical examiner, who told her Darcee’s heart and blood and other physical conditions checked out fine.

“The woman was so apologetic. She told us it was heat stroke, and could have been prevented,” said Vicki.

Family members say they heard nothing more from anyone in authority until December, when a phone call came from an investigator with workplace safety and health.

The parents have never been officially told precisely where Darcee died, but they’ve had a letter from the mother of a student who was at Darcee’s side when she collapsed and died. Darcee had told the student to catch up with everyone else who’d gone to the bus while she rested, but he stayed behind.

“She didn’t feel good,” said Perry. “Darcee was always at the back, making sure everyone was ahead of her.”

Darcee had a hat, still had water left, even had cucumbers in her backpack for added hydration.

As she stood up, said Perry, “She lost consciousness and fell.”

“The information out there is Darcee died of a heart attack — she died of hyperthermia,” said Lana Gosselin.

There was no cell service out in Spirit Sands. The family has heard park staff came by ATV to get Darcee to the parking lot.

“How does medical help get there? There was no (crisis) plan in place,” Erin said. The group had split up to get back onto the bus, and Darcee would have been alone had that one young man not stayed behind with her.

Kelly and Lana went to the Spirit Sands a few days after Darcee died, to finish her walk and to lay a memorial on the trails.

Vicki said several education staffers sent identical letters of condolence. “I got a personal letter from Brian Pallister — I got form letters from her employers,” said Vicki.

Perry said Darcee’s paycheque stopped two weeks later, though he says a division employee told him Darcee would be paid to the end of the summer to help with funeral expenses.

Darcee had bought additional insurance through the Manitoba Teachers’ Society for accidental death but, though the family appealed four times, the application was rejected on the grounds she did not die an accidental death, Perry said.

There were no funeral benefits, Vicki added.

“They keep saying it was a (pre-existing) medical condition. She died at work, on the job, from the heat. She was healthy.”

“The school division didn’t help us with anything” – Vicki Gosselin, Darcee ‘s mother

Officials have told the Free Press repeatedly the situation is in the hands of workplace safety and health, which does not have to disclose any findings.

The Manitoba School Boards Association’s extensive safety guidelines and policies make little reference to hot-weather activities. The rules primarily cover gym classes and events such as track and field meets.

“We’re going to pursue legal action,” Perry said. “You’d think after this, there’d be something in place.” If a student had died on that trip, he said, “They would have been all over that.”

Vicki and Perry wouldn’t yet speculate against whom they’ll take legal action. Talking about Darcee’s death is their first step.

Vicki implored the memory of her daughter leads to change,” she said.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Erin said. “She gave everything to that job and those kids.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca