Interview Transcript:
Dr. Jeremy Carver: Hello Sebastien!
Sebastien Sheldon: Hi! So I’m here with Dr. Jeremy Carver. Jeremy, why don’t you tell me about your relationship with John? How did you know him?
Dr. Carver: Well, it really was started off as a social relationship, because I’m married to Heather Brooks-Hill, who was a member of the steering committee for the [Occupational and Environmental Health Coalition of Peterborough], which I’m sure you will be talking about a lot, and John of course was on that steering committee. So, she would invite the steering committee to our place on Stoney Lake for a little ‘R&R’, and John and I would get chatting. He was a great storyteller, so he really, you know, would tell me stories from his days in the Navy, or the early days of GE and his struggles with management and so on around the toxic chemicals. And then when he discovered that I had been in a medical school and that I had done cancer research, he started asking me to look at documents that he had and tell me whether in fact those documents were as bad as he felt they were. And so that began, it went from a kind of a social interaction to a collaborative one.
Sebastien: And so, in your relationship with John, what quality in him impressed you the most?
Dr. Carver: Oh, he was a thorough gentleman, in the sense of “gentle”, “man”. You know, he was fierce about the issues of justice for the workers, but he always projected it in a very diplomatic way. And he was a great storyteller. He had a twinkle in his eye, would always have a story to tell about his many years at GE and his years in the Navy. So it’s what struck me most was he was a sort of a classic iron fist in a velvet glove, if you know that expression. Underneath he was fierce, but on the surface, you would say “Oh, what a nice gentleman”.
Sebastien: And so, with his work, what impact do you believe that it had on achieving justice for the workers that were injured by exposures at the GE plant?
Dr. Carver: Well, that’s a difficult question to answer, because I think John, were he still with us, would admit that he had far less impact than he had hoped. He had meticulously documented his days from being on the safety committee in the plant, he had minutes, he had documents, but the major contribution I think he made was in helping Dr. Kerin, whom I hope you’ll get to interview, in understanding the history of the workers in terms of their exposures. Because he had a marvelous memory, he could tell you exactly where things were in various parts of the plant. And you know, when the company would claim that “Oh no, there was no asbestos in that building”, you would learn from John that actually that building was connected to the next building with an open breezeway and there was no way that the buildings were separate, they had the same air handling system. Just the little nitty gritty details about how the plant was operated that helped Dr. Kerin initially, and then later when the group of workers got together to try to document the number of chemicals being used and their locations, his files were fantastically useful. Why I say he would be disappointed, is that that document itself doesn’t seem to have had much impact. The fact that, I mean the plant of course has disappeared, its been torn down, its no longer there, so that you cant go and fact check, but still, the account of the workers that was put together into the report by Bob DeMatteo really showed that the challenge in the compensation system was the multiple exposures to known carcinogens and toxins. So, it wasn’t just asbestos, which is the only thing that the compensation system seems to acknowledge, it was many, many others, and again from my own basic research knowledge around cancer, combinations are deadly. And so, I think he would have liked to have seen the documentation of the plant, the carcinogens and the toxins in the plant, that that report would change the way in which compensation applications were adjudicated, but as far as I can tell that hasn’t happened. The WSIB has not changed its modus operandi despite all the information that’s now in front of them. So, yes, huge potential impact, but with an adjudication system that’s resistant to change, he didn’t have quite the impact he would have liked to have had.
Sebastien: Thank you very much for that, that was very insightful.
End of Interview