A heart condition ruined a Victoria woman’s weekend. Now, misinformation is ruining her birthday.
A rumour has been circulating –– apparently prompted by a Facebook post –– that a medical emergency that delayed the Horseshoe Bay to Langdale ferry Saturday morning saw a 19-year-old die from toxic drugs. Coast Reporter received emails about this rumour asking why we haven't reported it.
This rumour is not true.
BC Emergency Health Services confirms that a patient was transported from the ferry to hospital Saturday, but they were in stable condition.
Saturday evening, a Facebook post, which by the following evening had 127 comments and 48 shares, said that a 19-year-old suffered a heart attack getting onto the boat and that there have been 13 deaths from a “bad batch of drugs” since last Wednesday.
The Victoria woman, who we are not naming, over Facebook confirms that she was the person who had the medical emergency. She has POTS and said she has been fighting the medical system to get a diagnosis for her heart condition, which “no doctor can figure out.”
She said she turned 20 Monday and has spent the day fighting the rumour.
On Saturday, the woman was on a trip from Victoria to the Coast to spend time with family, when she said she had a medical episode where her heart rate spiked and she couldn’t breathe without oxygen. It was “extremely traumatic” and the “scariest medical emergency” she’s ever had, said the woman. She is also adamant that she has never touched any drugs.
“I have an undiagnosed medical condition that ruined my trip and now have to deal with the fact that my condition is now progressing and I still don’t have an answer to what’s wrong with me. I’m now spending my birthday dealing with this stupid rumour.”
No matter how well-intentioned (it appears the initial post was trying to warn people of bad drugs), such misinformation and the comment threads that spawn from it may further traumatize those affected and in this case, threaten to deepen stigma against a community already devastated by the toxic drug crisis. From an editor who has spent years parsing small-town rumours and balancing privacy and the public's right to know, and still gets it wrong –– be very, very careful when posting about sensitive topics online, especially on rumour factories like Facebook.
On the claim of 13 deaths from bad drugs in the past week (another person told me nine people). While we don’t have readily available local statistics for how many people have died of drug poisonings on the Coast this year, the BC Centre for Disease Control does periodically update more general toxic drug death statistics. In the first three months of 2025, 10 people died in the North Shore-Coast Garibaldi region of Vancouver Coastal Health (North Shore-Coast Garibaldi includes the Coast as well as the North Shore and Powell River). That’s 10 of 428 lives ended by the toxic drug supply in the first three months of 2025 in British Columbia.
According to the statistics, in total, 13 people died of toxic drugs on the Sunshine Coast in all of 2024.
This remains, too many people dying in a crisis that’s gone on far too long and our thoughts are with their families and communities.
