LESLIE McBAIN
Jordan Miller grew up on Pender Island, an only child very close to his parents, who took him on adventurous trips around the world.
“We were a tight family. I couldn’t ask for a better relationship with my son than we had,” said his mother, Leslie McBain. “We had a really good life.”
After graduating from Salt Spring Island Secondary, Jordan started his own wood-stove installation business. When he injured his back on the job at age 23, the family doctor prescribed oxycodone.
McBain immediately asked the doctor to prescribe a different pill, worried her son — who, like many young men, partied with friends on weekends — could become addicted.
Her wishes were ignored, and Jordan died from an accidental overdose on Feb. 4, 2014 at age 25.
The grief-stricken mom complained to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, who would later find that the doctor failed Jordan in several ways, including “prescribing combinations of opioid(s)” and “not taking definitive action when presented with evidence of opioid misuse.”
After Jordan’s death, McBain cofounded Moms Stop the Harm to work for harm-reduction changes to drug policies. She and co-founder Lorna Thomas were at the United Nations for a session on narcotic drugs last year when they met a group of American and Mexican moms who had also lost children to addiction and hatched the plan for the international Mother’s Day campaign.
Although the battles are slightly different in each country, their goals are universal: The current systems did not allow them to protect their children, and they want change.
“Our first priority in our lives as mothers is to protect our children. We all feel like mother bears at this point because we lost our kids,” said McBain, who sits on a provincial committee looking into the opioid drug crisis.
“I often say I don’t do this for my son, I do this for your son, for the people who are still struggling.”