For years, Pierre-Paul Niquay wondered if his two older brothers could still be alive and living somewhere in Quebec.
Two of his siblings, Joseph Jean Antonio Niquay and Paul-Émile Niquay, were taken from their community of Wemotaci and admitted to a hospital in La Tuque, Que., — 115 kilometres away — after experiencing a health issue as toddlers.
They were never seen again.
Niquay’s parents were informed shortly after their admission to the hospital that they had consumed spoiled milk and died as a result.
“It’s a story that doesn’t add up,” Niquay said in a recent interview.
After decades of trying to find answers on their own, his family became one of more than 100 Indigenous families to request medical records through a Quebec law adopted in June of 2021.
The law, known at the time as Bill 79, allows Indigenous families to access the medical records of their loved ones who went missing or who died in health-care facilities in Quebec before the end of 1992.
According to a recent government report, 129 Indigenous families have started the process of searching for 221 missing children since the law came into effect.
Only 21 of those files have since been closed — ten of them in the past year.
