He was a good person.
He didn't deserve to die like that.
Nobody deserves to die like that.
[Reporter: Ioanna Roumeliotis] This loss is all the more haunting because of what else is missing.
Peace.
There is no peace with this ending.
You put your loved one in a home.
Counting on them to take care of your loved one.
It's just terrible.
It's inhuman.
[Reporter] Bob Thoms, his family says, was a gentle soul.
A retired building engineer who battled cancer and then dementia.
He was our older brother and he was amazing.
He made everybody feel special.
[Reporter] Now he's one of the faces of a decimated generation.
Susan Hynes and Bill Thoms are convinced their brother never had a fighting chance.
It's why they're fighting for him now.
He died without dignity.
He died without care.
He died without his family being there.
That breaks my heart.
[Reporter] Bob lived here at Extendicare Guildwood
in Toronto's East end.
The long-term care facility has been in lockdown since mid-March.
On April 23rd, it reported an outbreak of COVID-19.
I called them off the hook, off the hook.
Like I probably drove them nuts.
I wanted to make sure they were giving him water.
Feeding him.
Staff assured them Bob was OK.
When the home began to allow window visits last month
Susan and Bill rushed over.
We saw somebody that I didn't recognize in a hospital bed.
[Reporter] How did he look?
Skin on bone, there was nothing there.
Just mouth agape. wanting to communicate
but maybe not having the strength to --
He's moving and making gestures but I don't think he had any strength to do anything.
[Reporter] They took these disturbing photos
and say when they called out through the window for help
a staff member told them their brother had been turning down food and water.
I said I want to see him not be able to drink.
And they went got him the glass of water
and he drank a glass and a half of water.
He was looking at me trying to tell me something.
Then he'd look at them and think like what are you --
It looked to me like he was he was very surprised that they were giving him water.
[Reporter] It was a revealing glimpse into a home in crisis.
To date, the vast majority of the 159 residents at Guildwood have been infected.
And nearly 50 residents have died from the virus.
Michelle Wilson's father was one of them.
Her grief is overwhelming.
So was her outreach.
If this had happened in a school and it was children dying
there would have been an uproar.
How do we allow this?
How do we have so little regard and respect for our seniors?
[Reporter] David Johnson's life had been full of adventure.
As a young man he worked on merchant ships in his native Trinidad
before coming to Canada where he settled into the hospitality industry.
He was creative.
He was ambitious.
He was determined.
He was strong.
[Reporter] David moved to Guildwood after a series of strokes and a broken hip.
He was doing well and then COVID hit.
When you heard about COVID being in your dad's home
what went through your mind?
Panic.
Panic because obviously it's everyone's worst nightmare for anyone that we love
to be locked into a facility where there are cases
and you're reliant on their efforts and their expertise to contain it.
What did they say they were doing in terms of infection control?
They said that they were isolating the infected from the uninfected.
That they were containing it to the East Wing
and my father was in the West Wing.
[Reporter] Her father was in a private room presumably even safer.
Michelle and her siblings kept calling to check up on him.
The phone would just keep ringing .
We learned afterwards that it was because their staff was getting infected
and so they were short-staffed.
And we were trying to be sympathetic and patient and cooperative
but then just reached a point where we realized that no.
Something's cracking here.
Something's not functioning properly in the management of this this outbreak
[Reporter] When did that moment come for you?
When did that point come?
The shocking realization was when I did the window visit.
He was unresponsive.
He didn't turn to me.
He didn't acknowledge me and then I heard him coughing.
And no one was in the room
and I had to call someone in the room that I saw walking by.
At which point they checked him and they're like
'No no, he's just tired. He's fine.'
[Reporter] But he wasn't fin.
Michelle and her siblings insisted they be allowed inside on palliative grounds.
When Michelle saw her father up close
he had sores on his arm and his lips were cracked.
At which point I got the sponge and wet it and put it in hi mouth.
He really grasped on to it.
He wouldn't let it go.
He was really sucking all the water out of the sponge that he could get.
I did a few more of that and then I said to him, Dad, I love you.
And he said I love you and then he said water.
And that was his last words.
[Reporter] The despair of those final moments.
They are the crosses families now bare.
And in this shared grief, a growing demand for answers and accountability.
Susan and Michelle are suing the home for neglect.
Audrey Da Cruz is taking legal action too.
They had a duty of care.
They should have had adequate staff before.
[Reporter] Audrey took care of her 86-year-old mother Theresa for four and a half years.
Before her mobility worsened and she need a 24-hour care born.
Born in India, Audrey says her mother was a young widow
who worked in factories here to provide for her daughter's.
She never really bought things for herself.
She would spend all her money for things that we needed.
Teresa moved in a day before the lhockdown.
She had her own phone and on a chat in late April
told her daughter her roommates were ill but that she was OK.
Two weeks later, Theresa got a fever.
When the home called to tell Audrey
that was the first time she learned about the outbreak that had started weeks before.
The hardest part was not knowing that it was happening.
I have no doubt in my mind that we would have gone there at the very, very same day
that we found out.
I wouldn't have cared about whether she had a bed to go back to at that point.
It was life and death.
Obviously, we would have got her.
The home apologized for forgetting to add Audrey to a family email chain providing updates.
She was also devastated to find out her mother's sick roommates
were never moved out.
These people they were sitting ducks.
They could have built a structure in the parking lot.
And separated the positive and the negative people.
If you can't stand beside someone in a grocery store line
how does it make sense to keep positive and negative seniors
in a room together 24 hours a day.
We put the family's questions to the home .
In statements, it says it can't speak publicly about specific residents
but says it has been updating families with regular emails
and virtual town halls.
And it says it is making changes to better manage the outbreak.
Among them, it is now keeping sick and healthy residents apart.
It's hired dozens of new staff and is deep cleaning the facility.
What's more.
The day-to-day management of the home
is being handed over to a local Health Network until the outbreak is stabilized.
For Audrey, all that is too little too late.
She and her family are left with her mother's remains.
And the feeling that not only did the home fail to protect her but that she did too.
I wish that I'd never put her there.
I don't know if I'm ever gonna be able to get over that.
It's like a nightmare.
Michelle says her father and all the residents who died deserved better.
They're throwing our seniors out like they're garbage.
They're just dismissing them and disregarding them
and acting like they don't matter
and they're old anyway, they're just gonna die anyway.
Like it's just a complete disregard for dignity, for care, for respect.
It's appalling.
It's not my story, is his story.
And if it changes things for the better that's what it's about.
Let's change things so that our elderly become visible people.
And not hidden.
[Reporter] For Susan and Bill, this is their day of mourning.
And a day of reckoning too for all the lives left to end with so little grace.
Ioanna Roumeliotis, CBC News, Toronto.