Moms advocating for change after children die of drug overdoses

Two strangers brought together by the deaths of their children want to help others facing the horror of drug addiction.

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Krista Cabral’s 33-year-old daughter Brittani Silvestre was found dead in her Brantford apartment after overdosing on fentanyl last September. Six weeks later, Bernice Liverance’s 30-year-old son Kourie died of a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and carfentanil in their Brantford home.

“We’ve become friends,” Liverance said during a conversation in Cabral’s living room in Paris. “It’s nice. Nobody really knows what we’re going through. Unless you’ve lost a child this way you don’t understand.”

Cabral said Brittani was a likable, trusting kid who had lots of friends. She didn’t much like school and, like many, started experimenting with drugs as a teenager, later developing addictions to cocaine and alcohol. Cabral did what she could to help, for years taking her daughter to counseling, AA and NA meetings, even taking Brittani back to her native Nova Scotia for a time in the hope of a new start.

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Brittani was clean for almost two years shortly before and all through her pregnancy with a daughter who was born in December 2021.

It was a hot September day when Cabral took Brittani to a counseling appointment in Brantford.

“We walked out to the parking lot, and I told the counselor I was really scared that one of these days I was going to have a knock on my door and the police were going to tell me she’s dead. The next day I did.”

Kourie Liverance was the family jokester, known for antics like hanging his little brother off a doorknob by his underwear.

At 18 he was hit in the back by a tractor tire while at work. After Percocet, oxycodone and hydromorphone didn’t hit the pain of his injury, the doctor prescribed fentanyl patches.

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Liverance said her son started selling the patches to make money and buying cheap fentanyl on the street to deal with his pain.

Kourie got clean for a time in his early 20s but couldn’t resist the lure of fentanyl, a synthetic compound that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin.

“On Nov. 22, we went out for dinner,” Liverance said. “We were all supposed to have our hair cut that night. When we got home, I called out for Kourie but there was no answer. I opened his bedroom door, and he was on his bed. I knew.”

Cabral said she later learned her daughter had been given two doses of naloxone, a medication used to reverse the effect of opioids, hours prior to her death. She said Brittani came out of it in a rage and later called police when a friend she was with refused to leave her apartment. When the officer asked Brittani if ​​she wanted to go to the hospital she declined.

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Cabral doesn’t want that to happen again and has gathered about 1,650 names on a petition called Brittani’s Law that would require emergency responders to call an ambulance or a family member when they know naloxone has been administered.

Cabral and Liverance have also created a public Facebook group called Overdose Awareness – Together for Change to encourage people to “stand up, get loud and help raise awareness” about the fentanyl crisis in Canada and to demand timely, affordable drug detox services and mental health supports.

According to Government of Canada statistics, there were 8,049 opioid toxicity deaths in the country in 2023. That’s an average of about 22 deaths a day.

The number of opioid-related deaths in Brantford-Brant tripled from 2018 to 2023, with much of the increase driven by the pandemic, according to a drugs strategy report by the Brant County Health Unit. The number of local opioid-related fatalities in Brant rose from 22 in 2018 to 60 in 2023, with most involving fentanyl.

Overdose Awareness – Together for Change is also a space for addicts and grieving families to share their stories and for addiction recovery to be promoted without judgment, said Cabral. She and Liverance are also fundraising for what they hope will be a memorial wall in the city that includes the names of those lost to fentanyl.

Both women say they’re determined to ensure their children didn’t die in vain.

“We’ve put so many people in the same shoes,” Liverance said. “We just want to help prevent it from happening to someone else. If you’re dealing with grievance, we’re here.”

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