- Serge Bourassa-Lacombe is a striking figure as he hikes up Highway 11: dressed in red, carrying a 57 lb. backpack, and a 6' 9"c rocs.
Bourassa-Lacombe wants to be noticed. A former psychiatric patient, he is walking across Canada to focus attention on the plight of psychiatric patients, who can he field and treated without their consent.
His own nightmare began in February of 1995, when he says he was committed to the Centre
Universitaire de Sante de l'Estrie in Sherbrooke, Quebec by police, a victim of mistaken identity.
- Held for 57 days, he was medicated - given tranquilizers and a variety of anti-depressant and
anti-psychotic drugs - without his consent.
Since his release, he has become an advocate for the rights of mental health patients. He spent three years, fighting rot obtain
copy of his medical tiles and in 1998, filed a $1.888 million
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- lawsuit against both the institution and 6 doctors who treated him back in 1995, citing mental anguish, inconvenience, and human rights violations.
- Bourassa-Lacombe has since travelled across the country, on bicycle,
on
ferries, and via transport truck, to highlight the plight of mental patients, committed and medicated against their will.
Starting on April 1st of thin Year, he left his home in Lennoxville,
Quebec and began walking across the
country - without a penny,
relying on the support of
sympathetic individuals
along the way for food and
shelter.
Bourassa-Lacombe invites others to join him. «to support the human rights of the most defenceless persons in our society, the victims of mental
illness», calling for a Royal Commission inquiry into possible human rights abuses in Canadian mental health institutions.
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