Diane Brouillet was proudly independent.

She had lived on her own for 40 years.

Last summer, as the temperature and humidity skyrocketed during one of the worst heat waves in a century, the 73-year-old grandmother refused to leave home. She might not have had air conditioning, but she didn’t like the dry air and didn’t think she needed it.

“She goes: ‘People buy tickets and they spend money to go to Cuba. But I feel like I'm in Cuba in my apartment!’” her daughter Carina Houle told the Star.

“And I said: that’s not funny. But she says: ‘I'm good, I have this fan.’”

Diane Brouillet was one of 66 people who died from heat in Montreal in the first week of July 2018.

Diane lived in a second-floor walk-up in Lasalle, a post-war neighbourhood at the southern end of Montreal. She sometimes complained about her knee, which bothered her on the climb up the stairs, but was otherwise healthy.

As June turned into July last year, temperatures in eastern Ontario and western Quebec rose to between 33 and 35 degrees each day.

The humidity, which hit 94 per cent that week, made that heat feel far more suffocating. On the humidex, Montreal peaked at 44 — just below the threshold for conditions Environment Canada calls “dangerous” to human health.

In Lasalle, where you can walk blocks before finding the shade of a tree, the heat was even more stifling.

“There’s barely any grass,” said Carina. “And up on the second floor, there’s no air. It’s very hot.”

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On July 5, when Diane didn’t answer the phone, Carina thought she was napping, or out for a coffee. But when she discovered her door was locked from the inside, she knew her mother was home. She called the police. The officers wouldn’t let her go in.

“When I last spoke to her, she was giggling and laughing. She was outside with the neighbours the night before and they were chatting and having fun.

“If I had known it was going to be our last conversation, I never would have hung up,” she said. “I wasn’t ready to lose a parent.”