People First Radio

Patricia, Beatriz, and Constanza Morén are three sisters living in Spain. They joined People First Radio to share memories of their father, who died last year. “He was the best father a daughter could have,” Constanza said. “My father worked as an industrial engineer in the civil service in Spain and made a very good […]

For the last five years, Calgary based clinical psychologist Jonathon Stea has been posting online to try and confront misinformation related to mental health. “I really started out on social media and just in more popular media, trying to debunk myths related to the nature of cannabis addiction,” he said. “Once I got to social […]

From getting help for his own mental health, to working to change the culture around mental health at his fraternity at UBC, to insights from his role as a community mental health worker supporting people with diagnoses like schizophrenia, Noah Battista shares his journey to becoming an advocate for mental health. Battista says he was […]

Heather McDonald and Shane Steinhauer were in attendance at Nanaimo’s event marking International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, 2024. The Monday following the event, they spoke with People First Radio. The pair have worked together on a grass roots peer outreach initiative called Nightkeepers. McDonald said that in the week leading up to and […]

Speeches and stories from events held to mark International Overdose Awareness Day, August 31, 2024, in Nanaimo and Victoria. Amber McGrath urged people to lift others up and take action. “I know there’s been many times that I’ve sat on a sidewalk and cried for an hour and not one person said, ‘are you okay?'” […]

Author Bryce Andrews rowed his way up the Salish Sea from Seattle as he got to work on a future book exploring the area’s ecosystem. Along the way, he’s also encountered plenty of other folks on the water, and Andrews says he’s been struck by their kindness and manifest decency. “People are often just so […]

Mark DeVries of Parksville had spent decades visiting doctors and specialists for a variety of symptoms, including joint pains and daily headaches, which he says he was always told were normal. It was only recently that DeVreis, 57, received a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a condition that affects connective tissue. “It was my nurse […]

In September, people will start moving into 23 units of housing at 420 Albert street in Nanaimo, which had spent decades as an office building. Two of the developers behind the project, Adrian Vlasic and Fillah Karim, both in their twenties, spoke with People First Radio. Recorded August 21, 2024.

Charlotte Waddell, Director of the Children’s Health Policy Center at Simon Fraser University, says people of a certain generation will have experienced drug use prevention programs like “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. when they were in school. But Waddell says the efficacy of those programs wasn’t thoroughly studied before they were widely rolled out. “Nobody […]

Brandon Kirk is sharing his story of life after addiction, and creating a space for others to do the same. The Cowichan Valley resident is working on a new video podcast series, Beyond Your Wildest Imagination. “it’s a podcast about life beyond addiction,” Kirk said. “It’s about Cowichan Valley people telling their powerful stories about […]

Back in 2009 Craig Ellerman was staying at the downtown Victoria Salvation Army Men’s Shelter. “I wasn’t in too good a state of mind, and I saw a poster up on the bulletin board advertising information sessions for the Uni 101 program,” he said. “I looked at it, and at first I thought maybe this […]

Carissa Halton remembered her own graduation, so she didn’t expect her daughter’s to hit quite so hard. “I’m sitting there in the graduation, the principal is starting to talk,” she said. “She just said, I see you guys out there and this is something that your kids are doing because you sat and read with […]

Recent research suggests people want to get back in touch with old friends, but are worried about being a bother. “Although people seem to be generally interested in the idea of reconnecting, they don’t want to be the one to do it,” said Lara Aknin, Director of the Helping and Happiness Lab at Simon Fraser […]

Georgina Franki and Dingeman van Bochove speak about homelessness in Yellowknife and actions they’ve been taking to address the situation. First broadcast July 25, 2024.

The documentary escape game She Could Fly aims to educate around obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Sara Kenney and Mairéad Ruane from the game’s creative team spoke with People First Radio. “It was such a cool experience like to see how creatively such difficult experiences could be shown and conveyed to people without the experience [of […]

Ruhr University Bochum PhD student Laurin Plank has been exploring the idea of using social media posts as a diagnostic aid for mental health conditions. He says people could benefit from early detection. “If people only ever get help once they’ve developed the disorder, then a lot of damage has already been done,” he said. […]

Researcher Kora DeBeck is calling for regulation as a response to the toxic drug crisis. “The high level, main problem I see right now is the catastrophic number of overdose deaths that we’re experiencing,” she said. “The numbers are really holding steady years and years later, and what we know from coroner’s data, from a […]

As outreach workers, Lea-lah Manson and Lance Point work with people who have likely experienced brain injuries on top of dealing with the effects of homelessness and addiction. Manson says there can be a tendency for society not to look at those who have experienced brain injuries as people. “We don’t see people who have […]

Estimates are that there have been upwards of 600 000 possible cases of brain injury associated with drug poisoning in Canada since 2016, according to Mauricio Garcia-Barrera, a lead researcher with the BC Consensus on Brain Injury project. “By definition, any time that a person loses consciousness because they are not breathing, we are talking […]

Campbell River resident Ashley Kendrick spoke about the relationships she tries to create with parents when fulfilling the role of a foster parent. “You’re not trying to replace [parents]. You’re not trying to step in and steal their kids. You want their kids to go home. You’re wanting to foster that relationship and you create […]

Charlie Cavanagh started boxing at age 12. She’s represented Canada at international competitions and brought home medals, and she wants the public to remember that there’s a person behind the elite athletes on TV. “We’re hyper aware of the eyes that are on us and, after a poor performance, you get a lot of negative […]

The 100 Fine Gentlemen of Oceanside Who Give a Damn are one of a number of groups in the area based on a similar idea. Members agree to donate $100 to charity 4 times a year. Every quarter they meet and vote on what charity will receive those funds, which founder Kim Burden says are […]

After joining the army and training as a medic, and working as a civilian paramedic, Matthew Heneghan wants the public to remember that first responders are human. “We wear a uniform. We have a skill, but we are not impervious to the effects of sadness and trauma,” he said. Heneghan shared his story recovering from […]

Happipad is a non-profit that matches people with empty bedrooms with people looking for a place to live. Based in Kelowna, the group has agreements with partners in a number of communities across B.C., as well as one with the provincial government in Nova Scotia. CEO Cailan Libby spoke with People First Radio following a […]

Alcohol is the most commonly used psychoactive substance in the country, according to a government of Canada webpage. As a regulated substance, there’s a comprehensive system of rules dictating things like where and when alcohol can be sold, how much it needs to cost, how it’s allowed to be advertised, and what kind of warnings […]

15 years ago, Connally McDougall sold her first dress. “I was working in a gallery and the owner said, ‘Hey, if you or anyone you know are makers, why don’t you show us your work and we’ll see if we deign to put it in our gallery,'” she said. McDougall submitted a dress made from […]

Guy Felicella spent 30 years in the repeated cycles of gangs, addiction, treatment, and jail. Today, he lives with his wife and three young children, and has over a decade of recovery and sobriety under his belt. Felicella was one of the speakers at a recent community dialogue on the toxic drug crisis at Nanaimo’s […]

One day, when they were in the eighth grade, Christopher Lee and a group of friends decided to spend a Sunday a little differently. “We were just like, ‘Hmm, there’s something wrong in our community. We’re able to live such a nice and amazing life, but there are people who aren’t able to live that […]

Parksville resident Earl Blacklock has been recognized by the BC Achievement Foundation for his work helping expand the number of trained counsellors practicing on Vancouver Island. The Executive Director of Island Community Councilling, Blacklock said that the bulk of the work that he does is with trauma survivors. “The definition of trauma that I use […]

Vancouver non profit First United has created an interactive map that provides information on a number of evictions across B.C. Sarah Marsden, director of systems change and legal at First United, spoke with People First Radio to help break down the data. One finding was that around 1 in 4 people reported not finding a […]

WeCan Shelter Society is a Comox Valley organization that builds homes inside shipping containers for people who had previously been experiencing homelessness to move into. Charlene Davis, one of the group’s founders, spoke with People First Radio. She said it takes between $25,000 and $30,000 to build a unit and get a person living in […]

Managing director Dorothy Morrison calls Victoria’s Imagine Studio Cafe a “cafe classroom.” The cafe offers employment to young adults who may otherwise face barriers due to mental health, addiction, and homelessness. “There’s a lot of talk, but not a lot of action. So we needed to try to make a difference,” Morrison said. She said […]

The Nanaimo Foodshare is using food to help people move forward. On Mondays, in the basement of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, anyone from the community is invited to come share in a free meal, prepared by people in the Foodshare’s employment programs, under the tutelage of professional chef Calven Chow. Called the Monday Lunch together […]

Artificial Intelligence is making its way into more and more areas of our lives, a phenomenon that isn’t likely to slow down anytime soon. While AI isn’t necessarily part of our official publicly insured health care system quite yet, Zoha Khawaja says that day is coming, so we should be proactive about figuring out some […]

When the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic meant closures and reduced service for restaurants, there was a bunch of food that was suddenly without a place to go. Enter the Red Cedar Cafe in Victoria, which was born as a way to put that food to good use. Four years later circumstances have changed, […]

As a teacher librarian, Sara Stone is no stranger to children’s books. But it was what she wasn’t seeing on the shelves, combined with some personal experience, that prompted her to add author to her resume. Stone has written a series of children’s books about sensory processing disorder. Healthlink BC says that children with sensory […]

Marlo Mayers spoke with the media ahead of moving into a new supportive housing building in Nanaimo. Called Corenerstone, The 51 unit building is operated by Connective Nanaimo, formerly known as the Nanaimo Region John Howard Society. Residents at a temporary housing site in Nanaimo called Newcastle Place are being prioritized to move in, which […]

Around a decade ago Zakia Moulaoui Guery was working in a job where she’d get to know the stories of people who’d experienced homelessness. She realized that people in her life outside work were interested in hearing those stories as well, but that they didn’t have any awareness or exposure to them. Moulaoui Guery wanted […]

Singing and songwriting have helped Parksville-Qualicum’s Amarii express things he’s struggled to talk about. Now, they’ve also helped him sign with a new label, Kolossal Records. Amarii says he remembers falling in love with music sitting in front of the television watching Much Music Videos at age 12, but that he only started making music […]

Ten months after being shot in the line of duty and having her leg amputated in 1998, Laurie White was able to return to full unrestricted duties with the RCMP. When she was first asked to share her story, White says she wasn’t sure what people would want to know, but she quickly realized the […]

Gillian Kolla has been looking into the impact the drug toxicity crisis is having on people working to respond to overdose. “While people really, really find doing harm reduction work and doing service provision for people who use drugs to be valuable and rewarding work, it has been emotionally devastating as the drug toxicity crisis […]

Eight years after British Columbia declared a public health emergency due to a significant increase in drug-related overdoses and deaths, Moms Stop The Harm co-founder Leslie McBain wants people to continue to remember the human impact of the situation. “The deaths are piling up and they are people, they’re not just a number,” she said. […]

A group of Ontario school boards have filed a lawsuit against the operators of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok. The boards claim that social media products, which they say are designed for compulsive use, have impacted the way children think, behave, and learn. They say that they are bearing the brunt of what they […]

When Nisha Patel went through her medical records, including psychiatric records from visits to hospital and her university health clinic, the feeling spurred her to make art. “It really started this this anger within me,” she said. “These were all very personal experiences for me. But for the system, they were just yet another form […]

In conversation with Rory Kumala, CEO of the Vancouver Island Construction Association, on the organization’s Tailgate Toolkit program, which is designed to provide education and training on issues regarding substance use, mental health, and pain management. In addition to providing resources for workers, Kumala says addressing these issues with employers is part of the path […]

Gurleen Kaur of The University of Alberta speaks about her experience with psychosis. “Often people will read in textbooks, or papers…that psychosis is this break in reality,” she said. ” It doesn’t quite capture what it means to me, based on my experience.” Kaur said psychosis can cause her to see faces, which in the […]

Looking at how our brains are depicted onscreen with Heather and Sarah Taylor. The Canadian sisters work in the film industry, and explore depictions of mental illness, disability, and a variety of other topics on their podcast Braaains. Heather Taylor says often times shows can treat mental illness like a “problem of the week”. “I […]

David Dorson is the pen name of someone who spent a few years in prison in Ontario. he writes a column about his experiences on the website of Law 360 Canada. He spoke with People First Radio about his experiences.

Lee Chapelle has helped hundreds of inmates navigate their way through the Canadian corrections system. The founder of Canadian Prison Consulting, he also spent much of his young adulthood behind bars, beginning at age 16. Now Chapelle works with clients to address the issues that led to their charges and incarceration, and to prepare them […]

Would you exercise more for a dollar a day? Marc Mitchell of Western University was working in cardiac rehab, he noticed it was difficult for people to stick with a routine of regular exercise. That got him interested in ways to motivate people to get moving. “Folks who in some cases, literally died, like flatlined, […]