A Bell Island support centre marks Overdose Awareness Day with community vigil
CBC
A candlelight vigil on Bell Island Friday night marked International Overdose Awareness Day.
About 35 people gathered to remember friends and family who died from drug overdoses.
The event took place at The Hug, an addiction support centre on the island
"We have lost quite a few due to overdose on the island. Recently, up to last year, a young man passed from fentanyl and it made the whole island, more or less, come together," outreach worker Lee Taylor told CBC News.
"He was one of our own and he was so young."
Taylor said he overdosed three times in his own lifetime. He said it's a scary situation and when someone wakes up after an overdose, they experience a lot of confusion.
"You could have been dead. I'm four years clean now, going on my fifth. It's been a long road but I'm a lot healthier," said Taylor. "I feel better and I can work with the people that need me now because I couldn't help them when I was a user."
Fellow outreach worker Randy Ryan said to lose just one young person is a big deal and even one is too many.
Ryan said he knows the importance of his work. He remembers being called on to help when a friend of his daughter's boyfriend had overdosed.
Ryan assessed the man and helped save his life with his training.
"If they hadn't come got me when they did, well, he would have passed on," said Ryan. "But I got him back."
Taylor hoped people who attended the vigil would feel a little bit of happiness for the people that they lost by keeping their memories alive.
"It's going to be a warm feeling going around," he said.
"A lot of people, probably, being a little upset but still remembering their family and friends that have died. Just keep their names going. That's the big thing to me is, you never want the fallen people to be forgotten."
A long-serving United Church minister is preparing to leave his pulpit, adding pressure at a time when filling vacancies has become increasingly difficult.
Garrett Hawkins is on the cusp of making it to the big leagues. The pitcher from Biggar, Sask., has been added to the San Diego Padres 40-man roster.
Charlottetown Police and Fire Services are asking residents to avoid areas around Green Street due to a structure fire on Sunday morning.
Despite being born on a Christmas tree farm in Ohio, he wasn't really a fan of the holiday season.
A Hamilton hospital network is taking a closer look at how psychedelics might be useful in medicine.
Most people would prefer to spend the Christmas holiday weekend in warmth and comfort — but a Philadelphia man is going to spend it trudging 120 kilometres in the cold across Windsor-Essex.
Long before the first Calgary Stampede, the city attracted a different kind of cowboy.
After waiting four years to get his son the support the family says he needs to navigate school with learning challenges, a father from London, Ont. is fighting to make equitable healthcare and education a fundamental right.
Waterloo region and Guelph are under two yellow weather alerts warning of freezing rain changing to heavy rainfall Sunday, Environment Canada says.
A survey recently conducted on Prince Edward Island turned up a type of freshwater snail that experts say has never before been identified in the Maritimes.
A downtown Toronto long-term care home is rebuilding with a new design that considers lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, going beyond the province’s standards — but some say those standards are out of date.
It’s another wet and stormy day for much of Newfoundland and Labrador.
It’s been years since the tiny but aggressive European green crab made its way over to the Magdalen Islands, and some researchers in Quebec are warning it could be headed for the Gaspé next.