Ottawa student saves man’s life in Halifax with CPR

The Ottawa student rushed to his side, where a crowd was already forming. The man had no pulse and an ambulance had been called.

It had been two years since Kasia had learned CPR at Ottawa’s St. Pius X High School, but she remembered what to do. She began CPR and, with help from another bystander, continued until the ambulance arrived.

“I was just basically going through the counting,” says Kasia. “And then his wife came up, and it was like, ‘Oh my God, this had better work.'”

Kasia’s heroic efforts did work. Thanks to her, 60-year-old Nick is alive and well. And for that, his wife Pat is eternally grateful. “I feel we were truly blessed by a guardian angel.”

The ACT High School CPR Program was made possible at St. Pius X High School thanks to generous community and provincial-level support which enabled the donation of mannequins, teacher training and curriculum resources. The lead community partner in Ottawa is the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa. The print partner which donates the printing of the student manual is the Ottawa Citizen. Provincial partners of the program are the Government of Ontario, Hydro One, Shoppers Drug Mart, and The Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation is an award-winning, national charitable organization dedicated to establishing CPR in high schools across Canada. ACT raises funds to donate mannequins, teacher training, manuals and other materials to schools, and guides schools in program set-up and long-term sustainability. Teachers teach CPR to their students as a regular part of the curriculum. Over 900,000 youth have been trained in CPR through this lifesaving program to date.

Core partners supporting the program in Ontario and throughout Canada are companies in the research-based pharmaceutical industry: AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, Pfizer Canada and sanofi-aventis. They provide ACT’s sustaining funding and are committed to the Foundation’s national goal of promoting health and empowering Canadians to save lives.