A tragic reminder

Creator of new Unspeakable series has inside perspective on blood scandal

Unspeakable

Debuts Wednesday, CBC TORONTO Robert C. Cooper still isn’t comfortable talking about the difficult period in his life when he contracted hepatitis C from tainted blood products in the 1980s.

But the Toronto-based television creator, who needed transfusions to treat his hemophilia, also realizes viewers will be interested in his unique perspective as he debuts his new miniseries about that very subject matter.

Premièring Wednesday on CBC TV, Unspeakable is a dramatization of the tragedy in which contaminated blood and blood products infected thousands of Canadian patients with HIV.

Many thousands more were infected with hepatitis.

Four doctors, the Canadian Red Cross Society and a U.S. drug company were criminally charged.

Cooper says he called the series Unspeakable because of the prejudice that existed at the time, which kept people from speaking out.

“We were afraid to let anybody know. I was afraid to let anybody know I was hemophiliac because of the stigma attached to it and how people reacted,” the writerdirector-producer said. “It’s still not comfortable for me to talk about it that way.

“I’ve never been someone who liked to draw that type of attention to myself. I wear a bracelet now that has my medical information on it, but there were a lot of situations where I would take it off because I didn’t want people (to see it).”

Sarah Wayne Callies, Shawn Doyle, Michael Shanks and Camille Sullivan are among the stars of the series, which looks at the scandal from the perspectives of two families.

The storylines are based on personal accounts as well as two books — Gift of Death: Confronting Canada’s Tainted Blood Tragedy by André Picard and Bad Blood: The Tragedy of the Canadian Tainted Blood Scandal by Vic Parsons — and the public inquiry launched in 1993 and led by Justice Horace Krever.

Cooper, who’s been showrunner on Dirk Gently ’s Holistic Detective Agency and the Stargate TV franchise, said he made a drama rather than a documentary because this is the world he comes from.

“You couldn’t make a documentary about this, because most of the people involved are dead,” said Callies, an Illinois native whose character is “kind of” based on Cooper’s mother.

As time passes, there’s also the danger of the tragedy fading from the mind of the general public, Cooper said.

“So it felt like we were at a time when some of the people who did live through it are not going to be with us that much longer and it was important to get that eyewitness testimony so that this incredible story isn’t forgotten,” he said.

Unspeakable spans 30 years as it explores various facets of the scandal.