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VICE Canada story paints bloody picture of Thunder Bay

A recent online magazine article featuring this area’s paramedics paints a bleak and graphic picture of the city landscape our first responders traverse day-to-day.

A recent online magazine article featuring this area’s paramedics paints a bleak and graphic picture of the city landscape our first responders traverse day-to-day.

A reporter writing for VICE Canada published the article titled One Night with Paramedics in Canada’s Former Murder Capital. In the piece the reporter follows a number of Superior North EMS Paramedics as they respond to a number of calls.

“On any given evening, under the cover of night, the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario is drunk on cheap beer, high on Oxys, and struggles to bear the burden of having the worst homicide rate among any major Canadian city,” writes local author Michael Robinson.

“Picking up the pieces are Superior North EMS paramedics, who deliver life-saving medical care on the front-lines of the trauma, trying their best to delineate between the dying and the dead."

The author’s observations show a bloody night for paramedics who are forced to pick up the pieces after a violent and fatal incident.

Despite those observations, Superior North EMS Chief Norm Gale says that while it is true paramedics deal with violent circumstances, the bloody night detailed in the VICE Canada story shows a small snapshot of what his paramedics deal with.

Calls dealing with violent incidents make up a small percentage of the 25,000 emergencies area paramedics respond to each year.

"There's so much more to the people that work here," he said in reaction to the VICE Canada story.

But Gale wouldn’t comment on the tone of the article nor any specific observations made by the author. Instead Gale said the article simply “is what it is.”


 





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