PORT HAWKESBURY: Cassidy Bernard finally has some justice.
This came for Bernard, her family and the community of We’koqma’q First Nation as a whole, 1,351 days after the 22-year-old mother of two was found dead inside her home, as her ex and the father of her children was sentenced in Port Hawkesbury Supreme Court on July 6.
Dwight Austin Isadore pled guilty to manslaughter and one charge of child abandonment and was sentenced by Associate Chief Justice Patrick Duncan to 15 years and 3 years respectively; he explained the damage done in this case doesn’t end at Bernard’s death.
“All of these persons had to find ways to cope with that trauma, that life altering experience,” Duncan said. “And we hope that they may find their peace.”
Duncan accepted a joint recommendation from the Crown and defence; with credit given for time served on remand, Isadore will now face 14 years and 83 days behind bars in a federal facility.
Melissa Noonan, a communications advisor with the Public Prosecution Services, told The Reporter the second charge of child abandonment was withdrawn by the Crown on June 13, and part of Isadore’s conditions is that he faces a lifetime ban on firearms.
The Crown’s lawyer, Peter Harrison, advised it was “good fortune” that Bernard’s twin daughters survived, suggesting Isadore received one of the stiffest sentences enforced in the country for child abandonment.
Isadore, who is from Wagmatcook First Nation and was 19-years-old at the time of the murder, was originally charged with second-degree murder, but last month entered a guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
According to an agreed statement of facts, in the early morning hours of Oct. 21, 2018 not long after 9 a.m., Bernard died as a result of injuries she received from being physically assaulted.
Medical Examiner and Forensic Pathologist Dr. Marine Wood with the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service, conducted a post-mortem examination on Bernard. The cause and manner of death was determined to be blunt force injuries to the head and neck, and her death was formally classified as a homicide.
On May 27, 2019, the RCMP commenced an undercover investigation technique, commonly known as a “Mr. Big” operation, which would go on to last six months.
The objective was to have Isadore, who RCMP determined was the primary suspect, to provide any information he had concerning Bernard’s death to undercover RCMP officers. To realize this goal, the undercover officers engaged Isadore in communications and provided him with opportunities to be part of their non-existent criminal organization.
Three days after his meeting with the “crime boss,” Isadore was formally arrested in the death of Bernard on Dec. 3, 2019. He was brought to the Port Hawkesbury RCMP detachment, where in a video recorded interview admitted to the RCMP he went to Bernard’s residence where they got in an argument, he struck her several times and indicated she died in his arms.
In a community impact statement that was filed with the court from We’koqma’q First Nation Chief Annie Bernard-Daisley, who is also Bernard’s cousin, she reflected on a situation that occurred two weeks prior to Bernard’s death.
“We were rounding the Ashfield turnoff heading towards Orangedale. As I was rounding the dark turn, I saw a figure walking towards Orangedale, a small lonely figure,” Bernard-Daisley said. “The woman had her two hands in a cross in front of her chest and there was a light that seemed to shine from her chest.”
As she and her uncle, who is half blind, got closer they both realized it was Bernard, the young mother of two.
“We had stopped within five seconds of seeing her, and she was gone. I know that was her foreshadow. Two weeks later, she was found murdered at home,” Bernard-Daisley said. “She was never there, it was never her. It wasn’t her and her physical being as a human, it was her foreshadow, we were never going to find her.”
On the morning Bernard’s body was found, her cousin who was a band councillor at the time, remembers the exact weather on Oct. 24, 2018, when the council meeting she was in abruptly ended due to an emergency at Mona Bernard’s house.
“It was pouring, pouring, pouring, like an unnatural rain. That’s how heavy it was pouring,” Bernard-Daisley said. “When I got to Mona’s, I was just walking up to the side where the ramp was and I met up with a fireman and he said “Annie, Cassidy’s dead,” and as he said that Mona came flying down the ramp and she pretty much grabbed my shoulders and she was screaming “Cassidy’s dead, she’s dead.””
Ever since, the chief said said her family has carried a feeling of indescribable hurt and pain as she described the seven-month-old twin babies as having lips that were dry, cracked and bleeding, the tops of their heads were sunken in, their eyes were vacant and they displayed no emotion.
“The only way you knew these babies were alive was they were breathing, that’s it. There was no crying, there were no tears, there was no nothing. I can’t even describe that,” Bernard-Daisley said. “If you could see what I saw of a grieving mother just screaming for her child, of the pain in people’s eyes, in my family’s eyes, and smell what we smelled, it’s something that haunted me foever.”
Bernard-Daisley said in response, she threw herself into actions with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) as a personal outlet out of honour for her cousin.
“My community was shattered. Their hearts were shattered because everyone loved Cass. She was like a spitfire man. She got involved in every activity that happened in the community, whether it be a wake, or a funeral, or a dance,” Bernard-Daisley said. “Anything that happened, Cassidy was there. Nothing held her back. Not having two babes could hold her back.”
When Bernard was murdered, the community lost their sense of safety and security as We’koqma’q was a place of peace, a place the chief said that never saw a crime of this extent.
“We’ve had bad times and really, really difficult deaths, but nothing like this. We’koqma’q was hurt, saddened, shocked and robbed. We’koqma’q was robbed of an individual that carried a lot of community pride. We’koqma’q was robbed of a mother, a daughter, a sister and We’koqma’q was robbed of its sense of tranquility,” Bernard-Daisley said. “The hurt and anger that my community felt, it still there. The hurt and anger in all of us is still there. The fight that we have will never leave us, as now we speak for the rest of the country.”
In Bernard’s mother’s victim impact statement, Mona Bernard indicated her daughter’s murder has changed her deep in her soul, and she has lost a part of her forever.
“I’m not the same person and I never will be the same. My heart is so broken. The grief is a constant in my body and my everyday life. There are so many times my chest feels like it will cave in because I cannot breathe,” she said. “The two little girls are my life and they have literally saved me but I know that not too long from now, because they start school in September, that I have to tell them about their mommy. I will have to work for the rest of my life to help them heal from this incredibly horrible, monstrous, evil truth.”
Bernard’s death has been closely tied to the Red Dress movement and prompted a number of marches and rallies in Cape Breton to bring attention to MMIWG across Canada.
In November 2018, approximately 350 protestors blocked the Canso Causeway connecting Cape Breton and its five First Nation communities to mainland Nova Scotia, to show their support and solidarity for the Bernard family.