A phone line during the pandemic that morphed into a clinic providing culturally safe care in downtown Toronto

Clarissa Larson attends a prenatal visit at Call Auntie with midwife and program lead Cheryllee Bourgeois. The clinic provides a range of services, from getting a lump checked to accessing diabetes medication.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many Canadians were desperate for information about the virus. Fear was running high. Answers were in short supply.

There was also heightened concern, shared by Canada’s then-chief public health officer , that Indigenous people were at greater risk for worse illness, including death, because of factors including health inequities and higher rates of underlying conditions, as well as challenges accessing medical care.

In the face of that uncertainty, Cheryllee Bourgeois, a Métis midwife, along with other Indigenous midwives