The stench of his father’s body rotting inside a Toronto retirement home is still stuck in the back of Ricky Gillett’s throat.Responding to a call that his father had died, Gillett had just arrived at the Bill McMurray Residence. He stood in the lobby, perplexed to see body removal workers in protective white booties pushing a swollen body bag out of the home. He pressed the elevator button and stepped inside, riding it to his dad’s room on the third floor.The doors slid open and the lingering odour hit him. “I smelled something that I’ve never in my life smelled and I’ve never forgotten it — I could taste it. I can still taste it today,” Gillett said. A former sheet-metal worker and a devoted Toronto Maple Leafs fan, Roy Gillett, 82, had moved into Room 305 in January 2016 after a bad fall in his two-storey townhouse left him scared he’d get injured again or die alone, his body undiscovered.“That’s the great irony,” said his son, Gillett, 50.Roy was dead from a heart attack and in his bed for at least three days before his body was discovered on May 23, 2017, a Tuesday. His family believes it was five days, based on his last known sighting — dinner in the retirement home dining room on the previous Thursday, May 18 — as well as his cellphone log, which showed no outgoing calls since that Thursday, and the powerful odour that seeped from his room. The regulator that oversees Ontario’s 700 retirement homes said the fact that Roy never showed for meals in the home’s common dining area or called staff to say he would not be coming for lunch or dinner, for days, was a “red flag” that should have prompted a knock on his door.The retirement home said it did nothing wrong because its residents live independently and staff were not required to knock on Roy’s door. In a later email, the home said it has “reviewed our routines” and is now using wee ...
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