Adam Burgess
Day 3 · September 10, 2026 · 0:19:19
Key points Adam Burgess, 40, an equipment operator from Spruce Grove, Alberta, testifies about his sister Christy Burgess, who died at 36. He describes Christy as active, fearless, and well-traveled, working with juvenile offenders and serving as the glue of their family, though she had lupus (SLE) and kidney issues. Adam says he became severely ill after his own second Moderna shot in April 2021, with splitting headaches, fever, and being unable to get out of bed. He says Christy received her second Moderna shot around April 12, 2021, and was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor days later near Whitehorse, Yukon. He recounts the family waiting hours for a medevac, gathering at her bedside, and her being taken to Vancouver where she died after end-of-life care. He says his mother was sworn at and hung up on when she requested a quarantine exemption to grieve with family, illustrating a lack of compassion. He says a doctor attributed her intracranial hemorrhage to mRNA vaccination, that consultants ruled it inconclusive, and he testified to keep her death from being swept under the rug.
Speaker 1
0:00 So our next witness is Adam Burgess. 0:03 Adam, can you reach over and grab that Bible and put it in your right hand? 0:11 Adam Burgess, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 0:16 I do, so help me God. 0:20 You are here today to speak about your sister, Christy Burgess. 0:25 Yes. 0:26 who was 36, she died on September 7th, or I'm sorry, she was born on December 17th, 1984. 0:34 Just to introduce you personally, you are 40 years old right now. Speaker 1
0:39 And you're an equipment operator in Spruce Grove, Alberta. 0:43 Yes. 0:44 Can you tell us what Christy was doing and what her health was like before the vaccine? Speaker 3
0:51 Christy was very active. 0:54 She was... 0:57 She would do yoga. 0:59 She would do paddle boarding. 1:00 She was very active in the gym. 1:03 She did struggle with lupus. 1:06 I believe it's called SLE and some kidney issues. 1:11 But and, you know, her health would fluctuate, go down and up sometimes. 1:18 But for the most part, she was very full of life. Speaker 1
1:23 And my understanding is that she was working for, I think, the parole board with juvenile offenders at the time. 1:30 And you also communicated to me that really she was the glue in your family. 1:36 Can you kind of share with us about that? Speaker 3
1:40 Yeah, she was a very special person. 1:42 She was completely fearless, very courageous, but also very compassionate and loving. 1:50 She just had a 1:52 a big smile that was infectious and would light up everyone around her. 1:57 Um, and that included from the small town that we grew up in and in Tesla and Yukon to, to white horse where she would end her life. 2:07 Um, she, um, I, I, I thought that she was so cool growing up and I really deeply cared about her opinion and, and, uh, she would, she would, 2:21 If she didn't agree with something, she would ask questions in a compassionate way and really saw the best in people. 2:30 And she, to this day, has a lot of friends and family that miss her terribly and still think about her on a daily basis. Speaker 1
2:38 Just going to ask David to pull up a photo that you provided. 2:44 This is your sister, Christy. Speaker 3
2:47 This was the last time I saw Christy conscious. 2:49 This is my mom's birthday, March 26, 2021. 2:55 And I wish I had stayed there longer because that was the last time I saw her conscious. Speaker 1
3:06 She appears to be very charismatic and just has a lovely smile. 3:09 Is that who she was? 3:11 Yeah, she was. Speaker 3
3:12 She made everyone feel very comfortable being around her and 3:17 And you just, you just wanted to talk to her and see what she thought about things. 3:23 And she just had this, this great spirit and, and an unbelievable thirst for life. 3:33 Like she would, she traveled so much. 3:35 It was so impressive to me. 3:36 She traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia, and she went to India to learn how to be a yoga instructor for over a month. 3:45 She went to Japan. 3:47 She just, 3:48 Never said no to these big experiences in life. 3:51 And even if she was suffering with her health or even if she wasn't, she was just completely fearless. 3:58 And I still really admire her to this day about that. Speaker 1
4:02 Now, I'm going to ask before you share with us the injury experience of your sister, Christy, you got vaccinated yourself. Speaker 1
4:13 You got your first shot on March 13th, 2001. 4:17 And then you got your second shot on both Moderna on April 14th, 2001. 4:22 Can you share with us what your experience was after the second shot? Speaker 3
4:26 I was on a Wednesday. 4:27 I went home. 4:28 I started feeling a little off that evening and I went to bed. 4:34 And the next day I woke up and I was about as sick as I've ever been. 4:37 I don't really get headaches. 4:40 I had splitting headaches on the right side of my head. 4:45 Um, I had sweats, I had muscle and joint fatigue. 4:49 I had a fever. 4:50 I had nausea. 4:51 I could not get out of bed. 4:53 I was really, really in a bad way, but, um, because of COVID restrictions, I wasn't going to go to the doctor. 5:02 And I, I just really thought that, like, I hadn't really been 5:09 informed that these were gonna be side effects. 5:12 They really sort of advertised it as the side effects being a lot more mild, but I had a really bad time with it. 5:20 And I started coming out of it that Sunday night and I was able to go for a walk with my mother and tell her that my wife and I were now expecting children 5:36 that we had been trying for for a very long time. 5:39 And we got to have a couple of hours as a family as being extremely happy and looking forward to the future. 5:48 And then that night I received the call that Christy was unresponsive. Speaker 1
5:56 So can you share with us what happened? 5:58 My understanding is that she, on April 11th, 2021, 6:05 received her second Moderna shot. 6:07 I believe it was the 12th, actually. 6:09 Okay. 6:11 And then on, so it would have been then April 18th, four days, six days later. Speaker 3
6:19 Yeah. 6:20 I think technically the 19th that it happened, well, it happened at the end of the 18th. 6:28 She was living in a house out of town about a half an hour outside of Whitehorse with our youngest sister. 6:34 And I believe she had said that she wasn't feeling well or she was feeling off. 6:38 And she went into the bathroom and she was in there for a very long time. 6:43 And my youngest sister heard a noise and ended up going into the bathroom and seeing her unresponsive on the floor. 6:54 And the medical services in the Yukon are, you know, they're not always right there when you need them. 7:02 And that's not a fault on them. 7:03 It's just 7:04 reality of living in the north. 7:07 So I can't imagine what it must have been like for her waiting for an ambulance for a very long time. 7:15 And they took her to Whitehorse Hospital. 7:19 I received a call just after midnight from my mom's husband saying that something is wrong with Christy and that we have to 7:30 that this is the time to come together as a family. 7:32 And we made our way down to Whitehorse Hospital at that time. Speaker 1
7:38 And what happened at the hospital? Speaker 3
7:40 Visitation was limited. 7:41 There was only a couple of us that were allowed to go in there. 7:46 Again, services are limited. 7:50 So in the Yukon, when something like this happens to you, you have to wait for a medevac to take you to a place where they have more substantial facilities. 7:59 Vancouver, Edmonton, and somebody was already coming in from one of the communities. 8:04 And so we had to wait a very long time to be medevaced. 8:07 I think it was something like eight hours before she could even get on a plane to a better place. 8:15 We as a family stood around her, saw her with, she didn't look anything like this. 8:22 She had tubes in her and it was helping her breathe. 8:28 And we stood around as a family and held her hand and just begged and pleaded for her return. 8:41 I held her hand because I'd only spoken to my mom about us expecting children. 8:51 I wasn't planning on telling anyone else for a little while. 8:55 I did tell her. 8:57 I spoke into her ear and just one tear ran down her cheek. 9:03 And I'm still haunted to this day that she could hear me in that moment with what she was going through. 9:13 And we all just said, like, we need you. 9:15 We love you. 9:16 We need you to come back even if you're injured. 9:20 And we just told her how much she meant to us and how special of a person that she was. 9:28 And the people at the hospital were just kind of acting like, oh, this is fine. 9:34 And she's like, we're going to get her the help that she needs. 9:38 And I eventually had to ask somebody straight up that like, is she going to recover from this? 9:43 And they kind of just said like, it's not, it's not looking good. 9:48 There were people that wanted to go in and see her. 9:51 They weren't allowed because of COVID restrictions. 9:54 There are people that, you know, friends, 9:59 Just anyone that we contacted just could not believe what was happening. 10:08 There are moments from that day that are just burned into my mind that I won't ever be able to let go of probably. 10:16 And just the desperation as a family, just being completely helpless and wanting to 10:24 wanting to do something for her, and all we could do was just hold her hand and tell her how much we loved her. 10:30 And I didn't believe at the time that that was the last time I would see her, but it was. 10:48 She eventually got on the medevac, and she... 10:54 went to Vancouver with my mom who went alone because of COVID restrictions. 11:01 And my mom laid in the bed with her and she was there with her the whole time. 11:07 And the next day we got a call that Christie was not going to wake up and they've done everything for her and they were going to start end of life care basically. 11:19 And that was completely devastating. 11:23 I remember 11:25 standing in my living room and falling to my knees and not being able to stand up. Speaker 4
11:33 And I can't imagine what my mom was going through or anyone else. Speaker 3
11:41 And again, because of COVID restrictions, we're all at home, we're all alone, trying to text each other and speak to each other over the phone. 11:50 But that's no way to grieve. 11:51 You have to grieve with your family. 11:56 And my mom stayed with her the whole time. 12:00 Christy was an organ donor and she donated her organs. 12:04 And then my mom had to come back to the Yukon alone. 12:10 When she returned to the Yukon, she called the, I believe it was the COVID information line, where you could get information from and you could speak to people who were in charge. 12:22 And she asked them, can I have an exemption? 12:26 from this, if you left the Yukon for any reason, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but the Yukon at that time, we had been under a state of emergency for over a year. 12:35 It ended up being almost two years. 12:38 And because other provinces have mechanisms that they can impose restrictions and mandates on you, the Yukon didn't have that. 12:49 So they had to impose a state of emergency where they then could 12:53 impose a quarantine and things of that nature. 12:57 And my mom returned from Vancouver and called them and asked them if she could have an exemption so she could go and see her remaining children and just hug her family. 13:11 And the person that she spoke to swore at her and hung up on her. 13:15 And this is the level of compassion that we were dealing with at the time. Speaker 1
13:23 I'm going to ask you one more question and then the MPs will ask me questions. 13:26 Okay. 13:28 How has this affected you and your family? Speaker 3
13:34 This was probably the most devastating experience of my lifetime. 13:42 I willingly took the vaccine just like my sister did because I believed in our institutions and I believed in 13:52 the people that we've trusted and paid to keep us safe with things like this. 14:00 And I no longer have that kind of trust in anything that they do. 14:07 I think about this every single day. 14:10 I think I still carry a lot of PTSD from this experience. 14:23 It's hard to describe how it affects me because it affects the way that I look at everything and the way that I view everything. 14:32 It was so scary having our children. 14:35 We ended up having twins. 14:38 And my wife's employer at the time, the Yukon government, told her if she didn't get the COVID vaccine while she was pregnant, that she would be fired and she would be removed from maternity leave. 14:51 And she had to get the COVID vaccine while pregnant. 14:54 Also, being pregnant with twins in the Yukon, we were looking at being medevaced out, which you can do if you're not vaccinated, but then how do you get home if you aren't vaccinated? 15:07 So then we were looking at driving home to the Yukon, 2,600 kilometers in the dead of winter with premature twins. 15:17 And so she ended up getting the shot. 15:22 My twins were born six weeks premature. 15:26 One of my sons still has a significant verbal delay. 15:34 It just seemed like this COVID thing and the people that were directing it were just, it was so cruel. 15:43 It was just pure cruelty, what we experienced. 15:48 And to this day, 15:51 We had a child recently and he's never had a single vaccine. 15:56 And I'm not an anti-vax person. 16:00 I've never consumed any anti-vax literature. 16:03 I don't know about the ingredients of any kind. 16:08 But the reason that my youngest son is not receiving any vaccines is because I don't trust the people that are offering them to us anymore. Speaker 2
16:22 Adam, thanks for coming. 16:23 I mean, and sharing your story, obviously, to relive it, it's very painful. 16:28 Why did you, what was your initial thoughts of why you wanted to come and share your sister's story? Speaker 3
16:38 My sister's doctor, in her writings, said that while we can't be sure of the cause, mRNA vaccinations can cause what 16:50 killed her, was called intracranial hemorrhage. 16:54 And they were aware that it could cause that for people with lupus or SLE. 16:59 And some other doctors went up the chain and some more doctors concurred with that assessment. 17:06 And then it went up to ArcSoro, the consultants that were running this at the time. 17:12 And they gave my mother a good runaround for a good couple of years, requesting documents and eventually came back 17:20 with what they thought was what they called inconclusive, that they couldn't be sure. 17:27 It's my belief that Oxara was brought in to rubber stamp a lot of no's to give the vaccine the appearance of legitimacy and safety. 17:38 And I think by the Global News reports of how they were misappropriating the funds, I think that supports my assertion. 17:49 I don't want them to have the last word on my sister. 17:52 I believe that my sister's death was a vaccine injury or a vaccine death. 17:56 And I wanted to put that on the record. 18:00 And I think it's, I wanted to support her. 18:04 I didn't want her to be swept under the rug. 18:07 And I wanted to, I wanted to, 18:17 I guess provide myself with a little bit of closure on this as well. 18:20 So again, they didn't have the final word on it. 18:24 And I wanted to support others who are vaccine injured or people who have lost someone. 18:32 My sister did so much for me in life. 18:34 She always had my back. 18:36 She taught me so many things. Speaker 4
18:39 And I just, I wanted to do this for her. Speaker 2
18:46 Once again, Adam, thank you. 18:47 Thank you so much for making such a great journey to be here to share about your sister and what she meant to you and your family. 18:58 It is greatly appreciated. 18:59 As I said once again, I know it can't be easy to do that. 19:02 So we do appreciate you taking the time and coming to see us. 19:05 Thanks. Speaker 2
19:10 My colleagues, any questions at this time? 19:13 Thank you, Adam. 19:13 Appreciate it. 19:14 Thank you for your time.