Generational Dysfunction

How's this for a blueprint for wild dysfunction? Twelve children born to a violently abusing, alcohol- and drug-fuelled home environment. "My father has anger issues. Every little thing angers him. Sometimes he hit us with his fists, sometimes with brooms or mops." The eldest of that dozen children is now 26 years of age. His home is at the Attawapiskat First Nation reserve, located 150 kilometres north of Moosonee, Ontario.

He no longer has any close friends. They have died in accidents and alternately many have died as a result of drug overdoses. The man himself, Bernard Wheesk, smoked his first joint when he was eight years of age, drank alcohol for the first time at 12, and fathered a child at age 13 while in foster care. The young mother died in childbirth, the daughter lived until age seven when she died in an accident.

That litany of misery can happen anywhere to anyone.

It happens all too often to Canadian aboriginals, particularly those living on isolated reserves, where children's needs are neglected and they have little parental guidance, and youth suicides are horribly common.  Mr. Wheesk, now 26, has had a five-year intimate relationship with a woman who lives on the reserve. With her he fathered another four children. The children's mother subsequently broke her emotional ties with the father of those children.

Attawapiskat First Nation/Province of Ontario files

And just incidentally the Bank Council issued a resolution banning the man from the community. Before that, he had been flown with one of his two-month-old twins who was extremely ill, to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario for treatment. The other twin had died before this event took place, and the mother of the children evidently blamed their father for the infant's death.

On arrival with his infant son at the hospital, in the winter of 2011, hospital staff placed the baby in an observation room, and arranged a reclining chair next to the baby's crib for his father. The baby was "frequently fussy, irritable, and at times cried vigorously for hours", according to hospital notes. The infant's father was repeatedly asked to care for his son.

The result was that twice the father squeezed his infant son with sufficient physical force to break the baby's ribs both on his chest and his back. A trial has just concluded, and Bernard Wheesk was sentenced to nine months in jail.  Before sentencing, a Gladue report was ordered, and Mr. Wheesk was interviewed for the process; one expressively within the criminal justice system for First Nation offenders.

"[Wheesk had suffered] physically, emotionally and mentally from a horrific, extremely dysfunctional family background. He had no adequate parenting upon which to model his own behaviour."
"Kevin's [infant son] injuries were serious ... requiring significant force to the child's rib cage. These injuries would cause significant pain."
Justice Jennifer Blishen

For First Nations individuals tried and convicted of crimes, the issue of extenuating (quasi-forgivable) circumstances cited give them a compassionate edge in responsibility for their actions, although in all fairness all human beings choose to act on their free will choices. His was horribly compromised by the treatment he was exposed to as a child.

Outside First Nations reserves these things happen too. Sometimes those who experience such devastatingly miserable upbringing conditions instead of emotional and caring support and guidance, are able to reform themselves and guide themselves somehow to a better position in life. Bernard Wheesk clearly was incapable of doing so.

He had twice assaulted a vulnerable, defenceless, ill child, and had never, evidently, demonstrated remorse for the pain his son experienced. Once released, he will be on probation for a three year period, and barred from seeing his children without Family Service agency approval.