About me (Macdonald Stainsby)

I am Macdonald Stainsby, and myself and my family have been friends of the Cuban people and revolution for many decades now. My late mother began to travel regularly to Cuba (with my late uncle Bob) in her retirement in the early part of this millennium. When her brother died, I helped her return to Cuba again.

In her later years, she developed dementia that prevented her from maintaining her independence. For approximate eight and a half years, I was her sole or primary caregiver at home. I learned– by default, really– many of the environmental and social aspects of helping elders resist or slow down the decline into dementia.

Despite all of those years living side by side with my brave mother, there still has been no major medical breakthrough that dramatically changes the prognosis of dementia in elders in Canada. My mother passed in 2023.

But now? Cuba has helped develop new medications and breakthroughs for those struggling with dementia. This is true at the exact same time that the US (Trump) administration has put the entire country on a military siege of all their oil and energy needs.

I seek to both expose the illegal and immoral nature of the US oil blockade (compounding the 6 decade long economic blockade), and to demonstrate both what these miraculous interventions can do regarding dementia– in particular around Alzheimer’s—and what incredible lengths currently are needed to receive this treatment, despite the criminal blockade of Cuba, their world renowned medical system and scientific research facilities.

For my mother, for all elders who need this treatment immediately, and for a world where small countries can live and thrive without being bullied into humanitarian crises by much larger countries, I ask for your help with this project.

So, why me?

When my mother passed away in the summer of 2023, I had actually been to Cuba only a few months prior. During the Christmas holidays my mother had broken her arm, and needed a lot of rehab near term. As I had just passed 9 years as her caregiver, I was beyond collapsed and exhausted.

I needed a break, a true respite from the situation that I was in as her caregiver. Aside from a two-week trip– also to Cuba, to get uninsured dental work for not just less than in Canada, but less than the cost of two weeks in Cuba, flights and more—in 2019, I had taken only short trips into local forests as any kind of break from dealing with dementia and my amazing mom almost every day.

I knew that the younger man who felt invincible—and who put that energy into the world—was not the same guy I was in that moment (or now). Feeling a desperate need to get away, Cuba made more sense than anywhere else. People who suffer what amounts to a mental and physical breakdown are vulnerable. This is a good time—for example—to be a victim of an online love scam, or perfect crypto investment that isn’t.

I knew that vulnerable energy was mine, and that I needed to get away and the place where I was safest and least likely to fall victim to predation was Cuba. So off I went, despite having my body essentially declare “We’re not going out at all for a couple of days, you need to sleep!” when I tried foolishly to use an E-bike across segments of the country. I took a multi-day nap instead. Cuba was the only place I could imagine feeling safe in that moment.

After my mother’s passing, it became clear that I needed to honor her as best I could and one of the way for that was to honor her love for Cuba as well. In early 2011, after her brother had died, I helped her return to Cuba and to pay 50th Anniversary respects to the Bay of Pigs // Playa Giron during the 50th year since that great victory.

I took her ambulatory aids—wheelchair, walkers, similar—right to the same small town with the gigantic story. I then waited until night fell on October 14th, her birthday, and I spent about three hours in conversation with the ashes of her and her brother. They became part of the sands that blow across that beach, and there could not then or now have been a more fitting final place for Donna and Bob, children of Amy and John, than there. That night, I learned to listen to the Beatles again, without tears but with warm joy and comfort recognized. All things must pass indeed.

My own promises to them both, many times over that night, under starlight and flashlights, was to achieve my own recovery. Caregiving for dementia can nearly destroy a soul, but even though she asked me years before not to do so, I had stayed by my mother to my last bit of ability.

The caveat to her was simple: I promise you I will make the recovery, find the joy and be the man you have shown pride in for years. I will only declare our story together these last years over when I have helped your son recover properly as well. As you would order it, demand it and seek it.

So when the Cuba you, Bob, and I, and literal billions of humans respect, hundreds of millions of people own genuine solidarity thanks to, ahd who have only sent doctors where the Empire sends bombs? This insane White House is trying to starve them to death?

I felt a yank of duty. Not choice, but the only measures possible to take for Cuba is any and all necessary.

I was in a place that allowed me to detour immediately to get to the amazing island, and to see first hand that the Canadian government is lying about the danger of being in Cuba.

I also saw, but didn’t look deeply into, the story of NeuralCIM, the remarkable and perhaps world changing drug that not only resists some forms of dementia, but helps restore people. As a caregiver, I can strongly attest that one of the most difficult parts of loving your elders is when their personalities begin to alter. It seems very strongly that this can be reversed by the latest great achievement of the Cuban Revolution.

The only part of the story left for me was to not be a selfish git; It is likely going to be as bittersweet as possible to meet people who have benefited from this treatment; I never got to see my mother bounce back in this manner. Getting to know this process will have a very, very strong “not fair” component to it. It will be very hard to avoid thinking about “what could have been.”

See, I believe very strongly that environment and love and passions from your life must continue into dementia. I had just renewed my mother’s passport for travel, with only Cuba in mind, when her final months slipped away. The notion that doing what you love– camping, watching hockey, listen to and playing music, and being in revolutionary Cuba– would have teamed together to lighten her weight, think without fog, be less afraid, and more in the moment?

The thought is both beautiful and torture. But what is not torture is doing the very best we can to end the torture of the country with the highest ration of doctor’s to population on the planet, among the very highest in university degrees, who teach poor yet brilliant minds from the entire world to perform medicine back home.

To do our very best, now that the solidarity table is turned, to help those who have helped us so many times over. For me to be loyal to my mother, to the lessons I learned about what really matters in life through caring for her, I am trying to take these actions in solidarity with the extended family that is the island of Cuba.

#CubaNoEstaSola