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Freestyle skiing. triathlon Skateboard. BMX. The youngest of a close-knit family, Jonathan Phoenix Boulard has always been a guy who likes to move.
“Jo was the athlete, the ruthless guy. The one who always had projects,” says his sister Émilie.
“He was the family fool. He made everyone laugh,” adds his father Alain.
As a teenager, Jonathan collects his money in the summer to ski in the mountains of western Canada and the United States in the winter.
In the summer of his 18th birthday, he was working at a hardware store when his boss asked him to help a colleague clean a roadside with a brush cutter.
None of the boys have ever handled such tools. At some point the colleague’s machine jumped up and cut deeply into Jonathan’s legs.
The young man is losing so much blood that we fear for his life. He escapes, but not unscathed. The years that followed were marked by operations and rehabilitation.
In addition, there is the trauma, the psychological after-effects, the grief to be overcome – aspects that the family believes are neglected by the health care system.
Jonathan stuck to a grudge. He said to himself: “They healed me physically, they patched me up and decided I was fine”.
Alain Boulard, father of Jonathan Phoenix Boulard
“Eighteen is the age at which you define yourself. Jo saw her friends go to college. He got up alone, with our parents, had to learn to walk again,” says his big sister Emilie, who was always very close to her brother.
To relieve Jonathan’s pain, doctors prescribed morphine and oxycodone – his first exposure to opioids.
positive ambition
Despite the hard blow, Jonathan won’t let it get him down. He has “Positive Ambition” tattooed on his fingers and lives by this mantra. He was soon sharing an apartment overlooking Laurier Park in Montreal with his sister Émilie.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
In the Saint-Charles-Borromée family home, the Phoenix Boulard family, Alain, Émilie and Lisette
“He was always super positive in front of people. He was always joking. Life was always beautiful,” says the latter.
Jonathan wants everyone around him to feel comfortable. To the point of inviting the homeless into the apartment!
“Everyone loved him, he had an aura… Of course all my friends wanted to marry him! said his sister.
Kayaking, hiking, biking: Jonathan is slowly becoming active again. Skilled with his hands, he made furniture and took courses in cabinet making and bricklaying. Together with the actor Claude Legault, he is involved in campaigns to prevent accidents at work.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
The Phoenix Boulard family now treasures the furniture and gardens built by Jonathan.
“I sometimes asked him where he got his motivation from. He came home and said to me: “Allez Mi! We go to the gym, we do push-ups, we go to the park, we go bike riding.” We had a personal trainer and we worked out three or four times a week. He was in pain, he was struggling with his leg, but he still did everything,” says his sister.
Jonathan travels again. Vietnam on a motorbike, Indonesia with the family: he even crossed New Zealand by bike for two months. He began meditating and staying in Vipassana centers.
But anyone who knows the young man well knows that there are flaws behind this facade. Painkillers have left Jonathan with an addiction that he satisfies with substances bought on the black market.
Sometimes he was gone for whole weekends, he messed everything up… He needed an escape.
Emilie Phoenix Boulard, sister of Jonathan Phoenix Boulard
His father recalls “bad trips” he experienced in his room at the family home.
“We could hear him screaming like he was arguing with someone,” he says.
“He relived his accident,” says Émilie.
The family persuaded him to go to therapy. The day before his death, he ticked off two months of sobriety on his calendar while visiting a friend’s house. He uses what he believes to be oxycodone, which he bought on the black market, a drug he knows well. He drinks a few beers, takes amphetamines and cocaine. A diet that his sister says is not uncommon for him.
Jonathan sleeps with his parents again. You hear him snoring loudly. The next day they find him dead in his room. He is 27 years old.
The analyzes performed by the coroner will reveal the presence of a substance called isotonitazene in Jonathan’s body. Back in 2020, this powerful synthetic opioid had just been identified in Quebec.
At the family home in Saint-Charles-Borromée, the Phoenix Boulard family now treasures the furniture and gardens built by Jonathan.
“He was an extraordinary son,” said his father. Even when he was on drugs, he was always kind and generous. »