By A.P. Crawford (ap.crawford@skipatrol.ca)
Don Grant, Philippe Landreville, Pierre Blais
Last month we highlighted the lifesaving actions of one team of patrollers at the 2022 Escapade festival. This month we are highlighting another incident at the same event. As noted, Escapade is a weekend-long electronic music festival held in Ottawa each summer at TD Place and staffed by CSP Gatineau Zone patrollers working with the Ottawa Paramedic Service crew – who typically only take over critical patients. In 2022 over the three days, the team treated 261 patients, 16 transports to the emergency room, two patients were admitted to the ICU, and there were two fatalities, based on the records kept.
In the early evening of Saturday, 25 June 2022, festival security came running to the CSP first aid tent carrying an unresponsive female in her mid-20s, apparently suffering from a multi-drug overdose. She presented as unresponsive, diaphoretic, breathing barely detectable, along with a quickly weakening and erratic pulse.
Don Grant, Philippe Landreville and Pierre Blais became the treatment team. The patient was assessed as unresponsive (Glasgow Coma Scale 3) and continued to present with the very shallow breathing and waning pulse, insufficient to support life. Philippe monitored the pulse while Don and Pierre managed the airway, applying a BVM and then adding oxygen, as the Ottawa Paramedic Service was fetched.
The assisted ventilations successfully stabilized the patient’s pulse, but any interruption resulted in the pulse waning again. When the paramedics arrived, the patient’s pulse oximetry was reported as less than 94 per cent with the ventilations, even without the oxygen added. Without assistance, the respiration rate was at best six to eight shallow breaths per minute, so BVM assistance was continued.
After two unsuccessful attempts to intubate by paramedics, Don and Pierre continued with the BVM ventilations while the paramedics prepared for urgent transport to hospital. An OPA was also inserted by the paramedics, but the patient rejected it shortly thereafter.
With the patient requiring continuous ventilations, it was determined that Pierre, who was already at the head, remain in the ambulance to free up the attending paramedic to administer further treatment. Ventilations continued all the way into the emergency ward at which point a paramedic took over from Pierre while the patient was being transferred into the care of the ER medical team.
The patient remained at Glasgow Coma Scale 3 throughout the event. Any time ventilations were paused, she would not successfully breathe by herself.
It was reported back that the patient was transferred to the ICU for recovery after the initial ER treatment and survived the event due to the quick reaction of all involved, and the quality of the treatment that was administered by the CSP patrollers.
In September 2025 the team of Don Grant, Philippe Landreville and Pierre Blais was recognized with the John D. Harper Lifesaving Award for their actions in this incident which saved the life of this patient.
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