A tale of two funerals

Canada’s flags were lowered to half-staff February 29, 2024, and remained there until Brian Mulroney’s was buried March 23, with all the pomp and ceremony of state funeral. Choirs sang, eulogies were offered, and bagpipes heralded his arrival to the afterlife.

Meanwhile, in New Brunswick, two days later, a lovely and brilliant woman from Dublin left New Brunswick, quietly and without fanfare, for the very last time. She died March 22, 2024, at age 60. Eilish Cleary was New Brunswick’s Chief Medical Officer of Health from 2008 to 2014, and she was very good at her job.

I don’t think she liked the spotlight. She was content to do her job quietly, with dignity and integrity, and for the good of all New Brunswickers. She was a woman of powerful intellect and unshakable honesty, who followed her public health instincts and training for the benefit of the people of this province.

There not much we can say about her sudden and unexpected dismissal from her post in 2015. Government, following the usual pattern of clamming up when they get caught doing something dirty or underhanded, hiding behind the masks of “privacy” and “personnel matters” in order to cover up the real reasons Dr. Cleary was let go.

She was given a severance package in keeping with standard practice when people are fired, as she was, “without cause.”

“The minister came out and said there was an HR reason but they never told me what that was, or what I had been alleged to have done, or any specifics,” she said to CTV. No doubt there was a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), with a claw-back clause should she ever break the silence about the what really happened leading up to her termination. We may not know the details, but that’s how government and bureaucracy work in New Brunswick. It’s an easily recognizable pattern of behaviour.

Here, political power is used to silence the opposition. NDAs are concocted to make sure the

victim never tells their side of the story. It’s not quite pushing someone off a balcony, but the result is the same, at least, in terms of the victim’s career. Violate the secrecy terms of the NDA, and your career be ruined, your settlement will be snatched away, and they will salt the earth to make it difficult to find any sort of work in your field. It’s not just you, but your family will suffer too.

I’m still angry about what went down. Not so Eilish Cleary. I’m sure she was shocked when she was fired. But she never came across as angry or bitter. Mostly she seemed to worry about how to support her family. She told CTV News “It’s probably not a bad thing for people to have to go through things like that at times, it makes us realize we’re all human, and life is tough at times. We have to adapt to the challenges.”

Good God, the strength. Dr. Cleary’s ordeal would have crushed most people.

I was still in clinical practice when all this was going on. I recognized that Dr. Cleary had been wronged, and I wanted to help.

My wife and I discussed doing something, and we came up with this: Eilish was told she would need to brush up on her clinical skills in order to be credentialed by Horizon Health. We invited her to come work with us in our family practice for a few weeks. She did and – long story short – there wasn’t much I could teach her. She was absolutely brilliant.

We may never know the truth of why Eilish Cleary was fired. Was it because she pointed out concerns and clear dangers associated with shale gas wells? Was it because she chose to investigate glyphosate, a favourite herbicide of New Brunswick plutocrats, or was it somethings simpler and more threatening to those in power? Was it simply because she was a strong, highly intelligent woman with a sense of duty and a desire to speak her mind and to hell with the consequences?

I’m ashamed of what happened to Eilish. Ashamed that this is how we treat people who stand up for the health of New Brunswickers. Ashamed of the people who contributed to her downfall. Ashamed of the people who hide the truth.

Dr. Cleary, since arriving in Canada had been very involved in promoting the health of Indigenous people, first in Manitoba, and later here.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Dr. Cleary to attend a smudging ceremony at the hospital. I had never been to one before, and I have to say it was a very touching ritual, presided upon by Wolastoqewi Grand Chief Ron Tremblay. Eilish’s four children were there, along with her brother Kevin, and her aging mother Mary. The love in that family was palpable, and there were a couple of times I found myself unexpectedly wiping away a tear or two. If you can’t feel for her family after everything they have been through, you can’t feel.

I could go on and on about how Eilish volunteered to go to help deal with deadly Ebola outbreaks in Africa, or how she was awarded the President’s Award from the Public Health Physicians of Canada, but I think you get the picture. Scientifically solid, compassionate, loyal, and fearless.

On March 25, 2024, we will bid farewell to one of the truly outstanding doctors ever to tread the soil of this poor, downtrodden and abused fiefdom.

I don’t like funerals, and avoid them whenever I can. But I’m going to this one, because I want Eilish’s family to know that people who care about quality health care, who admired her and respected her, are grateful for the time she gave us.

Thank you, Dr. Cleary. You will not be forgotten.

Doug Varty is a semi-retired family doctor and former broadcaster. This text was first published publicly on Facebook by the author on March 24, 2024.