Lifelong community advocate Beverly Spanier wasn’t deterred when, in 2015, at age 70, she lost mobility and had no choice but to move into a nursing home in Montreal. She found meaning volunteering, writing and illustrating a digital booklet to provide comfort to others.
But when COVID hit the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in 2020, she became an outspoken patients’ rights activist, calling for additional medical support on-site and for those with COVID to receive care at local hospitals rather than at makeshift medical units in the building.
Spanier’s advocacy helped launch three provincial inquiries, including a coroners’ inquest and a report from the ombudsman that came out with 27 recommendations.
Spanier died on May 8 in Montreal. She was 78.
In Quebec, although only half a percent of the population lived in long-term care facilities or seniors’ residences, they represented 50 percent of the deaths from COVID.
At the Maimonides Centre, 67 residents died during the pandemic—and Spanier was loudly critical about how the disease was managed as the facility went into lockdown and the army was called in to care for patients.
In a 2022 interview, Spanier shared her perspective with The CJN Daily podcast.
“COVID was a serious enemy,” she told host Ellin Bessner. “I think errors were made because the Quebec government said, ‘Don’t take the COVID victims out and put them in hospital. Leave them in your institution.’ They set up miniature hospitals here: one in the synagogue, one in the gym, one in the staff lounge.
“You need a lot more medical presence in these institutions. We have a couple of hours a week. I don’t think we have the medical care we need when we have so many illnesses going on that are acute. It’s a chronic-care facility. This is an institution where people are ill. They are here because they can’t stay in their homes. We need proper care for them.”
Spanier was one of the first patients in the province to receive the vaccine, although she tested positive several days later and had ongoing after-effects from the virus. Despite this, she rallied support to prioritize getting second doses to seniors’ residences.
She documented her experiences in her journal, A Patient’s View of COVID-19 From Inside a Quebec Chronic-care Facility, which she wrote in April 2021.
“The nursing homes are now being watched more closely and everyone here in Quebec and Canada—and I would imagine worldwide—knows that nursing homes need an improvement,” she said. “Maimonides had problems, but there was much worse here in the Montreal area. It is my hope that we will look back at what occurred and have learned lessons.”
In 2021, she received the D’Arcy McGee National Assembly Citizenship Medal to recognize her contribution to the local community. “I’ve been given the award by individuals I’ve given a hard time to. So it’s amazing to me that they would turn around and give me an award for the things I’m doing that may have upset them,” she said in her acceptance remarks. “The voices of those in chronic care need to be heard.”
At the presentation, David Birnbaum, a Member of the National Assembly, explained, “It raised a couple of eyebrows in officialdom when Beverly was nominated, but that makes me all the more proud of it. Cage-rattling may be involved, but that’s how community advocacy and democracy work best. Beverly was tenacious and unyielding in her quest for answers that could comfort and reassure her fellow residents and their families.”
Spanier had a strong background in social justice. Her father, Albert, fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and eventually settled with his first wife Sybil in Hartford, Connecticut. Beverly spent her childhood there but graduated from McGill University with an honours degree in Economics and Political Science in 1967.
She worked as a high school teacher at Wagar High School in Côte St. Luc and had a voice as a representative of the teachers’ union, where she created contracts that would increase salaries and improve working conditions. For 35 years, she led auxiliary High Holiday services at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmount.
“Beverly Spanier donated to our archives a collection about her family and about her own writings and career. It arrived in 12 increments over 20 years, so we had many conversations over the course of that period,” Janice Rosen, archives director at the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives in Montreal told The CJN.
“I was especially struck by her writings based on her experiences in a long-term care setting, both immediately before and during the pandemic. She brought to the institutional health care setting the belief in justice and advocacy that she had originally applied in school union contexts and in her synagogue volunteer work. Her opinions and actions focused on improving patient care for those around her, and as she was one of the most articulate residents in the large care home where she spent her last years the other residents benefited from her speaking up.”
Miriam Roland told The CJN that her friendship with Spanier began more than 40 years ago when they sat near each other at a lecture at Shaar Hashomayim.
“She had the courage to keep being angry for all the right reasons,” Roland said. “A world according to her values would be peaceful, generous, kind, filled with laughter and love and sparked by questions that have no answer. Her opponents didn’t recognize her passion, commitment, perseverance and organizational skills.”
Although Spanier did not have children of her own, she was like a parent to many who are now adults. “She mothered them, urged them, pushed them, reminded them to be moral individuals, even when she criticized them or gave them a bad grade; she cared deeply, and they felt it. Regardless of age, we were all her children,” Roland added.
In her digital booklet, Tears, Suffering and the Helping Hand, Spanier offered her thoughts on living with and through challenges: “Suffering will always be a part of our lives. The question that remains for society is how best to help those who suffer. The question for those of us who are suffering is how best to cope.
“I believe that community resources can be found that involve volunteers rather than vast sums of money to help those who suffer. I can only hope that for myself I will find the courage to live out my last days as a limited paraplegic doing the most that I can to help both myself and all those around me.”
Spanier is survived by her two nephews and many friends.
Plans are underway to create an award in Beverly Spanier’s memory at McGill University’s Department of Neurology.
