[00:00:00]

Marion Randall

So good morning. Good morning, Commission. I’m Marion Randall. I’m local council and will be assisting the next witness who is virtual. I can see her name on the screen, but not her picture yet. There we go.

Ms. Hennig, can you see and hear me? Okay. So could you please state— I can’t hear you. Are you muted?

Caroline Hennig

I shouldn’t be.

Marion Randall

There we go. Okay. Thank you. So can you state your name for the record and spell your first and last name, please?

Caroline Hennig

Okay, my name is Caroline Hennig, C-A-R-O-L-I-N-E, and Hennig is H-E-double N-I-G.

Marion Randall

And do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Caroline Hennig

So help me God, yes, I do.

Marion Randall

Thank you. So just to give some background to you. You moved from British Columbia—or I think British Columbia, but at least Canada—in 2007 to Costa Rica. You have five children. The testimony that you want to give to the Inquiry concerns sort of a back-and-forth thing and because your father and your other family, not your children, are here resident in British Columbia. Is that sort of correct summary of where you’re going to start?

Caroline Hennig

Yes, I’ve got some children going to university in Vancouver, and my husband and I live here, but my husband works around Canada. But I’m usually here on my own.

Marion Randall

In Costa Rica?

Caroline Hennig

In Costa Rica.

Marion Randall

And that’s where you’re testifying from today, you’re giving your story.

Caroline Hennig

That’s right.

Marion Randall

So you can give us your presentation as to what happened with your father and particularly how the mandates impacted your care for him and the care he got.

Caroline Hennig

Okay, so quick background. We moved here in 2007, so we were well established. In 2016, my mom was ill with cancer and she died. That was the year I actually moved back to Vancouver to support my father. I was straddling two countries because we still had our home here. But we started the girls in school in North Vancouver and basically got my father back on his feet. And things went along really well. I just nipped back and forth to keep an eye on the house. We didn’t have it rented.

And then in 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and it had metastasized. So we began the whole medical treatment, a lot of doctors’ appointments, and laboratory tests, and to-ing and fro-ing. And I basically moved in with him. He had a little studio flat just above his garage. And that was in 2020, let me just think, yeah, the beginning of the COVID, so that was January 2020. And I just stuck close to him, got him through his tests, got his pain under control and nipped back and forth to Costa Rica. And then I had to go back for Christmas to Costa Rica, and my dad didn’t want to come; it was too much travelling. And then we had family here, and there was a lot of work to do in the house because it had basically been abandoned.

Marion Randall

If you could just slow down a little bit. I know I’ve told you there’s time constraints, but you were moving back and forth.

Caroline Hennig

Sure.

Marion Randall

Thank you.

Caroline Hennig

Okay, so basically, by the time 2021 came along, I was now back in Costa Rica. My father was managing well. My mother had been gone for a number of years. The pain was under control. He had established a relationship with various doctors, and I was able to stay a little bit longer in Costa Rica and get things sorted out. Then my daughter, I found out my daughter was expecting a baby and she was living in Abu Dhabi. So I went to Abu Dhabi in, it was June 2021. She had a difficult birth. But my father and I stayed in very close contact. We were always writing, always phoning, always Zooming funnily enough, which is why I’ve got this set up.

And I didn’t hear from him for a few days, maybe for a week. And I just thought he was giving me a bit of space because this new baby and my daughter was in quite a bit of pain. And then I got a call from him. And all he said was, “I’m really not well.” And I knew what that meant. He was very stoic and he wasn’t dramatic. So I knew that something really bad was happening. I had to go through a lot of rigamarole—understandably, this is not a criticism, but to get back to Canada and not have to go directly into quarantine. I was allowed to go directly to my father under compassionate grounds, which is what I did. And I arrived at my father’s house, on Bowen Island, I should add, on July the 22nd, 2021. Now I do have some photographs. There’s only eight of them. They kind of speak a thousand words. I think my words will be inadequate. I don’t know if the panel would like me— I’ve got them all set up.

Marion Randall

If you know how to set them out and can get them on the screen somehow.

[00:05:00]

I have no idea.

Caroline Hennig

Yeah, let’s try it. I’m going to try it. So I’m going to share my screen and I’ve got to put my reading glasses on. And I’ve got it. There we go. Now I don’t know if you can see anything. You should be able to see my father.

Marion Randall

Yes, we can. Yes.

Caroline Hennig

Okay, perfect. So this is just to let you know, just a terrible state he was in. This is after I’ve been there for almost a week and I have changed his bed. I’ve bathed him, but he’s dying. And actually, this weekend that this picture was taken, the district nurse who my father actually arranged— There’s a lot of protocol to get a district nurse to do a home visit. But she called out Squamish, a funeral home in Squamish, to alert them to an expected death that weekend. That’s how ill he was.

But I persevered. It was around-the-clock nursing. I didn’t leave his side and I gradually managed to get food into him because he’d been living on ice chips. And as you can see, he’s got pain au chocolat and mango. Suddenly his appetite just started picking up. And he was clean. And you can see he’s looking better already, but he’s still bedridden.

And then here, he starts to do exercises in bed. He’s determined to live. I really want to emphasize that. I’m still nursing him. I’m still at home and the district nurse is still making a visit, I think three times a week at this point.

Now he’s out of bed. He cannot walk, but he’s able to crawl and he’s taking an interest in all the things that he loves. He’s actually making his way there to his computer. He was a professor of computer science and psychology. He was a professor emeritus at Calgary University at this stage. So off he goes.

And then suddenly he’s asking for his, what I call a Zimmerman. I think it’s called a walker. He’s just doing a daily constitutional up and down his driveway. So he’s really making progress. And I’ve only been here maybe about two or three weeks.

And then the next picture, he’s not able to drive and you can tell he’s still very ill. The bruise on his face is actually where he had a terrible, terrible cut there. We weren’t able to suture it because it was found too late. But he’s healing and I drive him into town. We do some shopping and he visits his hospital, Lionsgate, to get blood tests done and all that sort of thing.

And then I think only maybe a week later, he’s driving me, maybe 10 days. And he’s still very thin, but he’s completely, he’s rallying in a really amazing way. And I have to tell you that, when I arrived, when I said the nurse called for an expected death, he was having terminal agitation. He was having visitors that no one else could see. He was having strange things like, they call it terminal lucidity. He was almost completely deaf. And he used, well, he didn’t use a hearing aid, he used a modern-day version of it, ear trumpet. But his hearing came back. So he really was on death’s doorstep, literally. So off we go. He drives me in.

And then in the middle of all of this—this enormous change for the better in his health—Trudeau announced his election for that September. So that’s 2021, I think. And it was clear by Trudeau’s rhetoric that he was going to make the unvaccinated a wedge issue for his campaigning. And that’s exactly what he did. And I mean, all this talk about not being able to take an airplane, not being able to take the train. I mean, I was living on Bowen Island with my father. That’s public transport. Suddenly I don’t even know if we’re going to be able to get off to see the doctor on the ferry. Never mind the fact that he kept changing the date. It ended up being November the 28th, 2021, that travel for the unvaccinated was cut off.

So once I got that date firmly pinned down, I had to pack up my father’s house. I got some help from a wonderful woman called Sam on Bowen Island. And we managed to get my dad’s entire house packed up. I mean, he had so much stuff. And we found him a retirement home, not a care home. He was fit and ambulatory, as you can see in this picture. And he moved in on November the 15th. The house is now up for sale. It’s empty.

And this is the state I left my father in. He was ambulatory, happy, and looking forward to life. But the truth is over the next four months, between then and when he employed MAID [Medical Assistance in Dying] to, I call it suicide. He used MAID to die. Basically, the isolation that Trudeau’s vaccine mandates imposed on him extinguished all of his happiness and will to live. Which is why it’s important for me to show you that he really wanted to live until the isolation got to him.

[00:10:00]

And then there’s just the last picture is actually my dad’s obituary. So I’m just going to exit the screen.

Marion Randall

And then can you describe for us what you think happened, or you know happened, in the nursing home in the four months when you couldn’t come back to visit.

Caroline Hennig

Well, basically there was no one anymore to take him shopping. He never once went out for dinner. If he went shopping, he got his own little scooter and managed to get there, to Whole Foods in West Van because Hollyburn retirement home was near to the Whole Foods. He seemed cheerful enough when I was talking to him. And actually, we talked about him coming down because he wasn’t vaccinated either and couldn’t come down with me. There just wasn’t time to get that put in place. But he had asked if he could come and live with me. We had talked about it when I was living with him. And I was, “absolutely wonderful, daddy, come on down.” And he even bought a really marvelous scooter—mobility scooter—that’s Israeli made. It’s really fantastic because it’s so clever you can take it apart and take it on as carry-on. So he bought that. It cost a bomb. So he was really planning to come down.

What happened between— That was about at the end of February. I don’t know what happened in that month, but I didn’t get any signs. I mean he was sad and he still couldn’t say my mother’s name without crying. So there was grief still that he was dealing with. But he wanted to live and he wanted to come down to Costa Rica. But I don’t know what changed. I think it was the isolation. I think it was the hopelessness because I kept saying, “Daddy just hold on. I know these mandates, I know the vaccine mandates are going to be lifted, just hold on.”

And of course, it was at the end of June that year, they lifted it. But he gave up. I think I got an email from him on the Friday telling me that he had called MAID to come in and they were going to perform this—I call it mercy killing or euthanasia—on Tuesday. What was really difficult for me was that I couldn’t call him. It was so psychological. I was so scared that if I said, if I called him, then my words were going to be clumsy. And I felt like I was in the position where I was trying to talk somebody off the ledge. I really regret that. But we did email each other because I’m more careful with my words when I write.

I did everything. I mean my daughter works for quite a world-renowned physicist at MIT, and she talked to him. And he said, “Get your dad’s CV down here right away.” He didn’t know that my father was thinking of MAID. But he said, “We’d love to have him.” He was Cambridge educated, he was a mathematician, computer scientist. He was smart. And this physicist at MIT said, “We’d love to have him on board,” on this project that my daughter’s involved in. And I told my dad. And I think this is quite telling because his reply to my email, which said, “Daddy, we’ve got this wonderful opportunity with MIT, this wonderful professor, it would be such a great thing for you.” He said, “You know sweetheart, in happier times I would jump at this opportunity.” And that just told me all I needed to know. I couldn’t— You can’t support someone adequately from a great distance. Not like I could when I was with him. We used to go for walks.

Marion Randall

Ms. Hennig, if I could ask a question. You have brothers who lived here in Vancouver, and you did tell me in our discussion—and perhaps you could tell this Inquiry—about sort of a division between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed in your family. And why your brothers were unable to help him, although they were here in Vancouver?

Caroline Hennig

Yes, my brothers were very pro, especially my youngest. And that had some conflict with it—not so much my middle brother. But I don’t really understand why. Maybe it’s that little ditty that says, you know, “Your daughter is your daughter for all of your life. Your son is your son until he gets a new wife.” And the fact of the matter was, I was just closer to my dad than my brothers and that’s not to criticize my brothers. It’s just the way it was. They weren’t able to provide the emotional support that my dad needed.

My dad’s nickname for me was Meg because Margaret was the daughter of St. Thomas More. And she’s famous for apparently climbing up the trestle of London Bridge to bring her father’s head down after Henry VIII executed him. I mean, a small detail, but my father and I were very, very close. I adored him. We were very philosophically in line and politically in line, and that just made it easier for me.

Marion Randall

And I think we’re nearing the end, Ms. Hennig. But you had one final comment I know you told me you wanted to make regarding our efforts to remember an informed consent, you talked to me about. That you felt that we had learned nothing from our past.

Caroline Hennig

Yeah.

[00:15:00]

I think it’s to Trudeau’s enormous discredit that he failed to grasp the moral and ethical concepts encapsulated in the Nuremberg Code, the primary one being informed consent. And he completely failed to grasp that many people who declined the mRNA vaccines were, in fact, standing up at great personal cost for the human rights legacy that’s not just simply laid out in the Nuremberg Code but was paid for with the blood of medical experiment victims of the Jewish Holocaust. I think that for the Liberal government to have betrayed—and it betrayed, that’s the word I want to use—this ethical concept of informed consent by its coercion of Canadians to submit to a novel mRNA injection with all its unknown risks, I think it betrayed not just the concept itself of informed consent but the Jewish people themselves who paid for it with their lives.

And I don’t say that lightly. I think it was horrifying how casually informed consent was dismissed. And in my mind, it was a betrayal of such magnitude that I don’t believe that those who are guilty of committing that betrayal have any moral authority to speak on anti-Semitism with any genuine legitimacy. I mean, the truth is the Liberal government failed at the very first opportunity to show solidarity, true solidarity with the Jewish people. January the 27th is the International Day of Holocaust Remembrance, and Trudeau had all the right words and platitudes. But actions speak louder. And I really feel that— I think the Jewish victims of the Holocaust that we pay homage to, they were failed. I think the government failed to align themselves, particularly with those victims of medical experimentation that was conducted by Nazi physicians. Because it’s a huge legacy that we owe, that we’re indebted to these people.

Marion Randall

So Ms. Hennig. Thank you for your testimony. Is there anything else you wish to say? Because if it’s not, I’ll put it over to the commissioners to ask you some questions, if they have any.

Caroline Hennig

There’s one thing I will just finish on, and that is that I think Trudeau allowed, his government allowed, the sacred act of exercising one’s humanity, whether it be devotedly caring for, showing compassion, or even just simply showing, you know, giving moral responsibility towards a loved one— I think to have reduced such humanity down to a government-issued privilege, to me, it just reveals a single most defining aspect of Trudeau’s character and the government’s undiluted moral weakness. I’ll finish on that.

Marion Randall

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hennig. I’m told by the powers that be, there’s a hard start for a witness at one, and I have to stop you. But thank you for your testimony.

Caroline Hennig

Don’t you worry.

Marion Randall

Thank you very much, and that’s from Costa Rica, so thank you.

Caroline Hennig

That’s lovely. Thank you very much.

[00:18:20]

Final Review and Approval: Margaret Phillips, August 25, 2023.    

The evidence offered in this transcript is a true and faithful record of witness testimony given during the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) hearings. The transcript was prepared by members of a team of volunteers using an “intelligent verbatim” transcription method.   

For further information on the transcription process, method, and team, see the NCI website:  https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/about-these-transcripts/

Summary

Caroline Hennig gives her testimony from her home in Costa Rica and tells the sad story of her father’s life during COVID. Previously a resident of B.C., Caroline lived in Costa Rica but remained close to her father and returned to his home on Bowen Island when he was ill with prostate cancer to be his caregiver. This was in the summer of 2021. At first in dire health, Caroline’s father rallied with her care and became his old self, even showing an interest in resuming his past career.

In November, Prime Minister Trudeau stated that the unvaccinated would not be able to travel so Caroline’s father had to move to a retirement home. Caroline returned to Costa Rica leaving her father in good condition however, in the following four months, the isolation drove her dad to ask for MAID to end his life. Caroline addresses the position of the government on the unvaccinated and informed consent, “I think to have reduced such humanity down to a government-issued privilege, to me, it just reveals a single most defining aspect of Trudeau’s character and the government’s undiluted moral weakness.”