MONTREAL -- Anahit Cilinger won't soon forget her despair in the fall and winter of 1999. Fresh from surgery to have a cancerous tumour removed from her breast, the Montreal grandmother anxiously awaited an appointment to begin radiation treatment.

Ms. Cilinger called her Montreal hospital every day for a slot. Sometimes, she called twice a day. Every time, the answer was the same: There was no room for her.

"I waited one month, two months, three months," she recalled in an interview yesterday. "I just felt rage and anxiety."

Ms. Cilinger decided to do more than seethe: She turned to the courts to initiate a class-action suit against those who made her wait. And this week, Mr. Justice John Bishop of the Quebec Superior Court gave the suit the green light -- setting the stage for what is believed to be the first collective lawsuit against a fundamental aspect of Canada's medical system; the maligned hospital waiting list.

"I don't want other sick people to have to go through the kind of suffering I did," Ms. Cilinger said.

The lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of 10,000 eligible breast-cancer patients in Quebec who have waited more than eight weeks for radiation therapy since October of 1997. Named in the suit are 12 Quebec hospitals. In all, damages could come to as much as $50-million.

"This is the first time someone has decided to attack the source of problems -- the waiting list," said lawyer Michel Savonitto, who is representing the cancer victims. "We're lucky to have the system we do in Canada. But if we want to supply proper care and commit to doing it, then we can't do it halfway."

At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of what is considered a reasonable delay before getting radiation treatment after surgery. Breast cancer health-care specialists recommend radiation within eight weeks after an operation, and no more than 12 weeks.

According to the Fraser Institute, which conducts an annual survey of hospital waiting lists, Quebec has the second-longest waiting time for radiation therapy for breast cancer sufferers -- 10 weeks, according to the 2003 survey.

Quebec Superior Court accepted eight to 12 weeks as the medically acceptable delay.

For Ms. Cilinger and Johanne Lavoie, the wait was too long. It isn't known whether their wait worsened their disease -- they say they are in good health -- but both say the lengthy delay was excruciating, physically and psychologically.

"It was an inhuman thing to live through," said Ms. Lavoie, who was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 1999. Like other patients in Quebec at the time, Ms. Lavoie waited for months, and then was sent by the provincial health authorities to the United States because treatment couldn't be provided in the province. She travelled every week with her five-year-old son to southern Vermont, a four-hour bus ride away.

"Any compensation I get from this lawsuit is secondary,' she said. "The long delays were hell. I was living with a sword of Damocles over my head. I want to give women hope that they won't have to live through the same thing I did."

Ms. Cilinger, three months after her operation, finally called her daughter in her native Turkey for help. Within 24 hours, she had secured a radiation appointment at an Istanbul hospital. She returned to Canada $15,000 poorer and decided to take action.

Hospitals named in the suit declined to comment. But the lawsuit means hospital administrators would have to get in the witness box and defend their decisions.

Michael McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition said the lawsuit shows citizens are trying to hold governments accountable for cuts to health care. "It points to the fact that governments in Canada have abdicated their duty of care, and citizens are going to hold their governments to account," he said.

"If people's health is being jeopardized in terms of extensive waits for cancer care, that's irresponsible. At the end of the day, these are decisions that are consequences of federal budgets and provincial budgets, where the economists and the MBAs cut health-care budgets."

Quebec has been described as a paradise for class-action suits. Still, experts say the suit could have repercussions across Canada.

"To the extent that people are using legal mechanisms to try to put pressure on governments, this could have ripple effects throughout the health-care system," said Nola Ries of the University of Alberta. "It may be an incentive for other people to say they'll try the courts if political pressure is not having the effect of shortening waiting lists."