Port Alberni's Community Action Team will give voice on Friday, Aug. 30 to the 150 people who have died as a result of the toxic drug crisis in the region. Volunteers have organized the third annual International Overdose Awareness Day event, which will include speakers, workshops, informational tables and a special project for the community.
"We need to have more public recognition of the crisis," says CAT co-ordinator Angeline Street. "We need to have more conversations about the crisis.
"It impacts so many people. It's 150 people who have died but it's their family members, their friends...the community members who have been affected by their deaths."
Speakers include Laura (L.T.) Todd from Victoria and BC Greens leader Sonia Furstenau. Todd has 20-plus years of lived experience in B.C.'s health care and social welfare systems as a person with concurrent substance use disorder and mental health diagnoses. She is currently completing a Master's degree and works as a substance use counsellor at a social services agency in Victoria.
Todd advocates for inclusive social change and is passionate about dismantling the stigma associated with drug use and mental illness.
Furstenau has been outspoken about the need for more wholistic action on the toxic drug crisis, which was first declared eight years ago. "It is not just a health emergency, but such a deep crisis in communities across the whole province that we're losing our friends and family members...to a very dangerous, illicit and toxic drug supply," she said. "That loss and grief...I don't think there's anyone not touched by that grief in this province."
Furstenau said politicizing the crisis has been detrimental to any solutions. "We have to humanize this problem," she said. "If people were dying unnecessarily from anything else I think we would have a more urgent response. We have to look at the whole continuum and spectrum and recognize there are investments to be made everywhere to solve this crisis."
Furstenau will also talk about the impact the toxic drug crisis has had on First Nations communities, which she calls "devastating."
Furstenau and Todd will be answering questions in one of four rooms at the Best Western Barclay Hotel Plus. Mary Clare Massicotte, manager of community safety and social development with the City of Port Alberni, will present on community safety. Informational tables from 20 different service organizations will be set up in another room, workshops such as Naloxone training will be held in a third room and a special art project will be set up in the fourth room.
Part of Port Alberni's I.O.A.D. event will include a visual memorial for people who have died as a result of the toxic drug crisis in the Alberni Valley. Michael Moore of Alberni Makerspace contributed 140 wooden hearts, one for each of the people from the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District who died from 2016 to January of 2024 (10 more have died since January, Street notes). Members of the public will be able to paint a heart however they want.
The wooden hearts will be attached to the fence in front of Dry Creek Park in mid-September as a semi-permanent display.
The project came about after Street had a conversation with someone regarding the lack of recognition of the people the community has lost. While there have been funerals for people who have died, the people who live downtown and knew the victims "don't get invited to the funerals," she said.
"This is something to recognize that we have lost all these people, and it will be in a public place."
Doors to the Friday, Aug. 30 event will open at 9:30 a.m. and the event will begin at 10 a.m. with a ceremony. The agenda includes a catered lunch and the event is expected to wrap up by 2 p.m. People are invited to drop in; registration is not necessary.
For more information on the Community Action team, go online to https://ptalbcat.org.
