COLE HARBOUR, N.S. - These days Phil Johnson can laugh with his family, but it hasn’t always been that way.
For the last two decades, Johnson has been living with PTSD, which he developed after the Swissair disaster in 1998.
“We were trauma counsellors and although you’re not supposed to work on-scene, that’s where we were ordered,” said Johnson, “we also worked with the RCMP in the wreckage hanger, and also with the families that had to come and identify loved ones.”
Johnson says his family sensed that something was wrong when he returned home on September 2, 20 years ago.
“When I got in that night, I walked in the front door and they were waiting for me, all three of them,” he said
“I ran right past them, ran downstairs, tore off all my clothes and emptied my overnight bag into the washer, washed everything and jumped in the shower for 20 minutes because I didn’t want the smell to be apparent.”
For years Johnson says he struggled, and that’s why he and his family were shocked to learn Veterans Affairs was paying for convicted killer Christopher Garnier’s PTSD treatment when he never served in the military, but his father did.
"I did not know when I was going through the worst of my PTSD that I could have got some help for my wife and our two children,” he said.
"You know, if we had had that years ago maybe we would have had a better outcome, maybe we would have had my dad back a lot sooner,” said Johnson’s daughter Rhiannon Verran.
Johnston says he’s written to both the Veterans Affairs Minister and the Prime Minister to express his outrage over the Garnier case.
Verran says that she believes if you kill somebody, you should have to forfeit your rights to be given this type of treatment.
“It's really infuriating that he's able to get this treatment and my family, my brother and I, my mother, who have been going through this with my dad for close to 20 years, had nothing," said Verran.
