Bayley Lemay is no stranger to calling 9-1-1.
Four years ago, the Thorne resident was alone with her oldest son Waylon at their house on rte. 366 when he had a seizure. When Lemay dialed for help, medical first responders arrived quickly, administered oxygen and took her son’s vitals while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
On Apr. 18, it was déja-vu for the family. This time, it was Lemay’s 17-month-old Hank, who started seizing during a birthday party at their house. Lemay was inside the house when she heard yelling. When she came out to the garage, she saw he was lying on the ground.
“My sister-in-law said, ‘Oh my God, he’s not breathing,’ and then we could see his lips turning blue,” Lemay said, adding that she called 9-1-1, put Hank in the recovery position to keep him from choking, and waited for help.
Only this time, there were no first responders on the scene.
Thorne residents have not had access to first responders since July 2025, when Thorne council ended its fire services agreement with Otter Lake. Thorne entered a new agreement with the Shawville-Clarendon department, providing residents with fire coverage while the municipality rebuilt its own department.
Thorne council had an offer on the table from Otter Lake to continue providing first responder coverage, but voted it down. Since Thorne is located too far from Shawville to benefit from its first responders, Thorne residents have been without the service while Otter Lake continued to offer it to its own residents.
“It was along the lines of, ‘Do we really need them?’ All these years we haven’t had first responders, we had ambulances,” said then-mayor Karen Daly Kelly at the time.
But Lemay wants to change all of that. After the recent incident involving her son, she has been raising awareness about the importance of first responders, circulating a petition asking Thorne council to resume first responder services on a temporary basis.
“There’s such a contrast in the care that we got this time compared to the incident we had in 2022,” she said at her home on Friday, holding 17-month-old Hank who had been in the hospital only weeks before.
She said having first responders on the scene quickly during the 2022 incident was crucial to helping her manage the situation. She said the responders from Otter Lake arrived in less than 15 minutes.
“He was my first baby, and I’d never experienced anything like that,” she said, adding that she would not have known what to do if it weren’t for the first responders.
This time, she said the family waited 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. For Lemay, this wait further highlighted the importance of having first responders, especially for more vulnerable members of the population for whom not having immediate care could mean the difference between life and death.
“There’s such a gap in emergency care. It’s dangerous,” she said. “What if someone is having a cardiac arrest episode? Or if somebody was choking and it was lodged so deeply that we couldn’t remove it? Or if someone was having a stroke?”
Last week, the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO) confirmed the wait time for Lemay’s ambulance to be 45 minutes. According to data obtained from the CISSSO, this exceeds the average wait time for Priority 1 calls in Thorne over the past two years, which is 23 minutes.
MRC public security coordinator Julien Gagnon said an investigation is under way to determine why the ambulance took so long, adding that high wait times aren’t uncommon in the Pontiac, where some residents live far from the ambulance stations.
Gagnon said having first responders on the scene within the first few minutes of an emergency is crucial, especially given a sometimes-longer wait for the ambulance in the region.
“It could be a broken leg or a cut or someone’s hemorrhaging blood and people don’t know how to react [ . . . ] Those are all things first responders can do, and those things are very important in the first few minutes, especially when an ambulance takes a while,” he said.
Gagnon said while first responders may not always be able to medically treat the issue at hand, and they can’t transport the person to the hospital, they can also play the crucial role of controlling the situation.
“[It’s] the reassuring of the people,” he said. “At least somebody’s here to take care of my baby or my child or my mother or father, or elderly people.”
As Thorne is slowly trying to rebuild its fire department, fire chief Lee Laframboise said he has had some individuals express interest in becoming certified first responders. But he said he needs to have interest from more than just a few individuals in order to have a reliable service.
“There’s no point in having three or four first responders that work away, and that aren’t around half the time,” he said, adding that even if he can get some individuals certified, they’re not guaranteed to always be around to respond to medical emergencies.
“Unless people are paid on-call, how can you be guaranteed to have somebody go?” he said. “The only guarantee is the ambulance.”
Lemay said she understands the challenges getting the fire department up and running again with first responders. But for the time being, Otter Lake still provides a service that Thorne residents could benefit from, if only the council could come to an agreement.
She said she felt the decision to end the agreement was made without public consultation, and wants Thorne residents to have a say in the decision.
“We live here. We want to feel safe. I want my kids to feel safe,” she said.
In an email to Lemay from Thorne director general Jessica Ménard obtained by THE EQUITY, Ménard said council was concerned at the time that the money Thorne was paying into the department was not benefitting their own municipality.
“One of the key concerns raised was the lack of clarity on how funds were being allocated [ . . . ] Council made the decision to rebuild and strengthen our local fire department to ensure resources are managed directly and transparently within the municipality,” the message reads.
Ménard said she will be requesting a quote from Otter Lake for first responder services ahead of Thorne’s May 14 council meeting, where Lemay will present the results of her petition. Ménard noted that any agreement would have to be voted on by council.
As of Monday afternoon, Lemay’s petition had 188 signatures, all but six of which indicated they were in favour of having temporary emergency responders.
Gagnon said he will be requesting additional ambulance data from the CISSSO in order to highlight gaps in ambulance coverage. He said that information could be of interest to municipalities if they are considering implementing some kind of first responder service.
“[It’s] to be able to communicate that to councils and say, here, here’s the information [ . . . ] for all municipalities to say, ‘Maybe you should consider implementing this kind of service,” he said.
Lemay’s son Waylon has had four more seizures since the first episode in 2022, and fortunately Hank is back at home recovering after having his own scare. But with baby Cash born just a few months ago, Lemay is worried she might need to rely on emergency services again in the future – and wants to make sure he gets the care he needs.
“He could have another seizure, and it could be ten times worse. And if help doesn’t get here on time, there’s really big consequences to that,” she said.
