Faced with battle against time to save lives, Chisasibi’s Cree Nation buys medevac plane

With limited hospital resources and long transfer times, Chisasibi’s new Sibi Air medevac plane aims to get patients to Montreal in under two hours.

For doctors in Chisasibi, Que., saving a person’s life can often be a battle against time.

The community on the banks of James Bay has a small regional hospital with limited services.

“We are missing a lot of things,” Dr. Darlene Kitty tells CTV News. “Certainly, an operating room and surgeons. We don’t have a CAT scan or an MRI.”

Kitty is from Chisasibi and has worked in the community for decades.

• READ MORE: Search for children’s remains at former Quebec residential schools

She is also the director of the Indigenous program at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of medicine.

“Right now, I think most patients realize this is what we can do or offer,” she said, adding that when a patient needs further care, it can often take hours to get them to Val d’Or or Montreal.

In an attempt to solve this life-threatening problem, the Cree Nation of Chisasibi bought its own medical evacuation (medevac) plane last March, known as Sibi Air.

The hope is to build an operational base in the north; instead of having to call an air ambulance from afar, the plane will be staffed and ready to leave at any time.

“There are multiple companies that do come up here to provide those services. However, all of them are [based] in the south,” said Cree Nation Operations Director Barry Bearskin. “Whenever a call goes out for a medevac, it’s not uncommon that the patient will only get the medical attention that he or she needs in seven or eight hours. With the new service, we can have the patient in Montreal in about two hours or less.”

The plane is a King Air 350, fitted with two stretchers, a defibrillator and intubation equipment.

“We are able to intubate them at any time with our equipment to stabilize a patient until we get to the south,” Nurse Claude Morency tells CTV News.

With only a gravel runway at Chisasibi’s airport and what Bearskin describes as weather that can be “four seasons in one day,” finding a reliable solution was paramount.

“The King Airs allow us to do LPV approaches, which means that you can actually descend to a lower altitude to an airport in bad weather,” he said. “It increases the chances of getting in and out, especially up here.”

McGill University intensive care physician Dr. Dev Jayaraman says he sees some of the most severe cases when patients are required to be flown to Montreal.

“We always talk about the golden hour or the golden few hours,” he tells CTV News. “You really want to be in a centre where we can take care of them with the appropriate medications and the tests that we need. Delaying even two or three hours is a major problem.”

In addition, Chisasibi is one of the larger communities in the area, which Bearskin says makes it a hub for other smaller towns.

“It’s not uncommon that the neighbouring communities, whenever they have a patient that needs medical assistance, the aircraft picks them up and brings them to Chisasibi,” he said. “They get assessed by a doctor and then, depending on the patient’s condition, they determine whether the patient should go to another facility to the south.”

Chisasibi’s hospital was built when the town, formerly known as Fort George, was relocated in the 1980s.

Since then, Kitty says the community has outgrown the facility, and the need for a new hospital is growing.

The Quebec government confirmed a new $300 million hospital would be built, but the timeline for when has been delayed and is expected to only be updated in spring 2026.

Kitty adds that people’s health needs are also evolving, pointing to a Cree Board of Health study that found in 1983 the diabetes rate in Chisasibi was 2.3 per cent.

In 2021, it was 31 per cent.

In addition, she says high-risk pregnancies and cancer patients often need to receive treatment outside the community because the hospital is not well-equipped to aid them.

Along with a new seniors’ residence that is currently under construction, the new hospital is expected to also be an opportunity to bring some community members home.

“We want to repatriate some of the patients we have staying in the south,” she said. “It’s certainly cheaper to take care of a patient up here than send them south for an ultrasound.”

The community notes that the challenges don’t stop at simply building a new hospital.

It is estimated that the new facility will need 700 staff members, which may put a strain on housing and other resources.

“You’re running to try to catch up with all of that, so that’s a challenge in itself,” Chisasibi Deputy Chief Mark Wadden tells CTV News. “That’s just one building, though. How do we keep up with all of this demand?”

Kitty insists visiting surgeons will play a critical role in offering better services in the north, as well as increasing the number of Cree people in the health care sector.

She explains that for the past decade, there’s been a campaign to try to attract more locals to careers in medicine.

“I think [the patients] really welcome a Cree professional,” she said. “Because there is already that knowledge of the culture and the realities.”

Bearskin adds that, in addition to health care staff, they also want to train people to be pilots. “Once we establish the base here, it will be 100 per cent Cree owned,” he said. “One day, we hope we will have 100 per cent Cree pilots as well.”