former spouses, same rare brain cancer: they don't think it's a coincidence

coincidences are almost always described as strange, weird or odd. here’s one: gerry matthews and his ex-wife christine seguin were both diagnosed with glioblastoma, a rare and deadly brain cancer, within two weeks of each other late last summer.strange, weird and odd. but is it a coincidence? matthews and his family don’t think so.matthews is an accountant and has worked for the federal government for almost 40 years. he started to show signs of short-term memory loss last january and thought he was experiencing burnout. “my ability to analyze a situation and come up with solutions was slipping away rapidly,” he said.but the cause behind his lapses was not pinned down until aug. 25 when he was diagnosed with glioblastoma after he was rushed to hospital following a collapse. a ct scan and mri showed he had a cancerous mass in his brain. he had surgery on aug. 28.seguin had started to suffer from what she describes as mild seizures in june, but didn’t think it was anything serious. “i just felt dizzy and i had a headache,” she said.seguin was diagnosed with two tumours on sept. 7 after she had a seizure so alarming her daughter, laura dill, called 911. she had surgery on sept. 10 and was released eight days later, with radiation and chemotherapy to follow as an outpatient.seguin has 64 staples in her head. matthews has 76. dill, 37, and her brother richard matthews, 35, have spent most of the past four months shuttling from one hospital to another. on nov. 14, seguin started to have difficulty processing instructions. she returned to hospital. it’s unlikely she will ever return home, said dill.

fewer than three per cent of glioblastoma patients are still alive five years after diagnosis. it is the same form of brain cancer that claimed the life of the tragically hip’s frontman gord downie, who was diagnosed in december 2015 and died in october 2017. u.s. sen. john mccain was diagnosed in july 2017 and died 13 months later.there are few explanations for what might cause glioblastoma, although the strongest link so far appears to be high-dose ionizing radiation, the kind used to treat cancer, as well as some genetic factors. there doesn’t appear to be a link to lifestyle factors such as alcohol use or exposure to chemicals or pesticides in the workplace. potential carcinogens must pass through the blood-brain barrier to get to the brain.but matthews is of a dogged disposition and was determined to get to the bottom of the bizarre double diagnosis. there had to be something. he remembered anecdotal and unsubstantiated stories that toxic fuels and other dangerous chemicals may have been dumped into the field across from his old house about 50 kilometres west of ottawa.burnt lands road did not have city water, so any well that fed off the same underground seem might have carried chemicals, he reasoned. maybe it was something in the water.“cancer is everywhere. but glioblastoma is not everywhere,” said matthews’s wife, jackie. “they have to find a connection. there has to be something that’s causing this.”matthews and seguin have been divorced for almost 20 years. matthews started to look back to the years he and seguin spent together. and that brought him to the house they built together almost 30 years ago on a parcel of land they bought on burnt lands road between carp and almonte.“it was mom’s dream house,” said dill. “it had cathedral ceilings and a kitchen island.”

burnt lands road is named for a fire that swept through the area more than a century ago. the road is on an alvar, a flat landscape also known as a limestone pavement, where soil is thin or non-existent. it is part of a rare and fragile ecosystem. ottawa gatineau geoheritage calls it “an outstanding example of this globally significant habitat.” the cracked and fractured limestone is dotted with stands of cedar, spruce, balsam fir and poplars. it supports some 82 breeding bird species, 48 butterfly species and 98 owlet moths and is home to a globally rare orchid called the ram’s head lady’s slipper.some of the alvar is on private land. about 610 hectares of it has been designated an area of natural and scientific interest by the ontario ministry of natural resources.the family moved to their new home on nov. 11, 1990, and lived there for four years. dill was eight and her brother was seven when they moved in and as children, they felt a little of the magic of the alvar. they hunted for frogs in the ponds that dotted the landscape. they walked through the cedar forest and learned to skate on one of the ponds.“it had a chronicles of narnia kind of feeling,” said dill.

the matthews’s house faced a portion of the alvar that had a connection to the diefenbunker, located about 14 km away in carp. it was a communications installation with an antenna relay system for the diefenbunker, which was completed in 1961 and decommissioned in 1994.officially called “terminal building site r-i/s,” the installation on the corner of march and burnt lands roads consisted of communications equipment such as two dozen antennae and an aboveground antenna hut, said andrew mckelvey, a spokesman for the department of national defence.a few reminders of the land’s past remain on the site, including the concrete hut, a fence and the concrete base plates for the communications towers.the site was declared surplus by dnd in july 1993. the antennae were dismantled and dnd transferred the land to public works. in 1998, the nature conservancy of canada acquired almost 185 hectares. the transfer contained a provision that the land be given legal protection status.the nature conservancy of canada turned the land over to the province for light recreational uses such as hiking and bird watching. the communications towers were removed sometime prior to the park being regulated as a provincial park in 2003, said dean noonan, park superintendent at fitzroy provincial park.no one remains at the nature conservancy who would have had memory of the transfer of property, said spokesman andrew holland. to the conservancy’s knowledge, the land had not been used for illegal dumping.“when we receive land donations, we have two mandates — to return them to their natural state and to make them accessible to people for hiking, walking and natural appreciation.”

when matthews was released from the hospital, he started knocking on doors on burnt lands road. he discovered that, against all odds, a neighbour’s husband had died 12 years ago, also of glioblastoma.he knocked on the door of the house where his family lived all those years ago, where greg smith and danielle viau now make their home.“i was shocked when he took his hat off,” said viau this month.viau and smith had their own story. viau had started to feel ill in september 2018. she felt nauseated and lost more than 30 pounds. last march, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour the size of a pea. she has not had surgery, but the tumour, which has not grown, is being monitored.“yes, it’s alarming,” said smith. “we’re already dealing with danielle’s tumour and someone comes in who has had brain surgery.”their well is 150 feet deep, but smith notes that water varies in quality on different parts of the road. their water was tested this year.“it was extensive testing, but it was all biological,” he said. “if i want more testing i have to pay for it myself.”smith has questions of his own. sitting in the kitchen of the house, he gestures out the window, which has a view of the alvar. he has heard that the property was chemically defoliated while the military was using it. he points out that the dnd portion of the alvar has few trees on it — and these are relatively young — compared to the alvar lands on the other side of march road.“a lot of people were aware of what went on because it was fairly evident. i think it would be interesting to see if the military had records of what was sprayed out there,” said smith.“i don’t know what it is. but i think it would be worth doing a groundwater test for potential carcinogens.”

mckelvey said dnd and the canadian armed forces manage vegetation on bases and wings across the country to ensure they remain safe for military training and operations. vegetation is managed to reduce fire hazards, maintain safe lines of sight along roadways, and keep power lines, air strips and training areas clear.“dnd and the caf are committed to conducting these activities in an environmentally-conscious way, and any pesticides are applied by licensed contractors in accordance with provincial and federal environmental regulations,” he said in a statement.an environmental disclosure report for the almonte antenna site was done in 1995 and it was provided to the new owner of the site at the time of property disposal, said mckelvey.“while we are able to confirm the use of one pesticide (spike 80w), we can only confirm its usage in 1991 as we don’t have records available from previous years.”mckelvey added the soil was sampled when the land was transferred and it indicated there were no concerns on impacts to the soil related to the pesticide use.out of the 37.6 million people who live in canada, it is estimated there will be 1,785 new glioblastoma cases a year.“having a gb diagnosis is rare using any definition of rare, even though gb is the most common of the brain tumour subtypes,” said faith davis, an epidemiologist at the school of public health at the university of alberta whose work focuses on rare cancers and environmental exposures.“the bottom line is that we don’t have the capacity to attribute any one individual’s tumour development to any specific cause and, in fact, there is some consensus that the role of chance may play a larger role in tumour development than previously thought. we do know that high dose ionizing radiation is an external risk factor.”dr. beatrice melin, a physician and cancer epidemiologist atumeå university in sweden, said she has only come across one couple with glioblastoma in her clinic. her research has found that spouses do not have an increased risk of glioblastoma. “so i would say that it is by chance that both the husband and wife in this family has developed the disease.”there have been rare reports of clusters of glioblastoma, said melissa bondy, the chair of the department of epidemiology and population health at the stanford cancer institute. she heard of one while she was doing research in houston, texas, and another in rural canada many years ago.

it would be very difficult to narrow down what might have caused matthews’s and seguin’s glioblastoma, said bondy. “you would have to collect samples and the exposures. you would have to have a lot of data to prove it.”laura dill and richard matthews have both had mris themselves. they were both tumour-free but believe they will have to be monitored for the rest of their lives. glioblastoma is most commonly diagnosed among people in late middle age. gerry matthews and christine seguin are both 63.“it has been so long since we lived in that house. maybe the glio is waiting until we turn 60,” said richard matthews.dill believes there has to be an environment factor at play. “it is too coincidental to believe otherwise. it frightens me greatly. it frightens me for my children and husband and fearing that they would possibly have to face with me down the road what i am going through with my parents now.”she has lived in many houses, but the one on burnt lands road is the only one she still dreams about.“it held a special place for me. and now it’s a weird feeling.” also in the newstop newsmaker of the decade — jonathan pitre: ‘you could never have enough of him’the cost of loneliness: canadians are facing a solitary future — and it’s affecting their healthtaking certain vitamins during breast cancer chemo tied to recurrence, death