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OTTAWA — An agitated orderly at a Hull hospital demanded that an anglophone family — still reeling from a cancer diagnosis — address him in French in the emergency ward because he was “Québécois” and “c’est le Quebec,” the family has complained.

To make matters worse, the patient, John Gervais, 77 and a Canadian Navy veteran, is a longtime resident of Aylmer, Quebec and, though too weak to speak, is fluently bilingual.

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“We want him fired,” Ottawa businessman Steve Long, 47, said of the orderly. “We really do.”

Long said his father-in-law was a robust man until about two months ago when he started to feel weak, lose his appetite and struggle with constant back pain. Many medical appointments ensued.

On Oct. 9, now in a frail state, he was taken to the emergency ward of the Hull hospital, one of three under the umbrella of the Centre de santé et de services sociaux de Gatineau.

For the next several days, a battery of tests was conducted, leading to a suspicion of lung or bone cancer. By Oct. 12, a Saturday, the older man could barely speak, couldn’t stand on his own and needed morphine relief roughly every three hours. He was still in a curtained-off bed in emergency.