Vigil remembers victims of drug crisis
By Lethbridge Herald on April 1, 2021.
A small group of mourners gathered for a candlelight vigil in Galt Gardens Tuesday night to remember those lost in the opioid crisis this past year. Herald photo by Tim KalinowskiTim Kalinowski
Lethbridge Herald
tkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com
A silent vigil was held in Galt Gardens Tuesday night for the victims of the opioid crisis lost over the last year.
About 30 people turned up on a cool evening and lit candles to remember the dead, and to help address the grief and trauma of those left behind.
Jenna Aubichon lost both her cousin and her sister to overdoses in the past year.
“It’s a pandemic among everyone right now, and especially this city,” she said. “This city has had so many losses in the past weeks. We have lost so many people due to the addictions.”
Raven White Cow also lost a sister to an overdose, and has known many others who passed away this year.
“The news scares me, because you never know who passed away next,” she confessed. “It’s like an everyday thing. I swear every day it is like someone else, a new loved one, has passed away to the addiction.”
White Cow said there is no way to truly understand such a loss if you have never experienced it.
“A lot of people look at it from the outside,” she said, “and they don’t really understand how it affects families, and how it affects children, and what it actually does. It never goes away.”
“Before I lost my sister I was part of the community that did not look fondly on (addiction),” Aubichon added. “But losing my sister opened my eyes. These people didn’t choose to be where they are at right now with all the trauma and everything.”
The vigil was organized by the Kindness to Others Renewal and Healing Centre organization. Founder Alvin Mills said such events help families and loved ones of the victims in some small measure cope with their unimaginable grief and trauma.
“We wanted to acknowledge the ones we have lost, and also the family members, the mothers, the fathers,” he said. “They are just as impacted by the opioid crisis that we are all going up against. And I think it is important for them to allow that process of grieving.
“For a lot of us, we have unresolved grief. We have trauma we never dealt with, and that’s something that has to be looked at: to start addressing the trauma and the grief. It just keeps getting harder and harder as this crisis continues.”
Lethbridge has one of the highest overdose death rates in the province of Alberta at 44.1 deaths per 100,000 people. About 50 people died of overdoses in Lethbridge in 2020 alone.
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16-15
NOTE – Most of those deaths occurred while the Safe Consumption Site was open. It sadly killed many young people on the streets of this city!
We failed them when we opened that facility that made a party of addiction!
ALSO NOTE – There have been no fatal overdoses so far in 2021! Compare that to the first quarter of 2019 and 2020 when SCS was open!
Those are the true stats and Lethbridge no longer has the highest overdoses in this province.
We are lining up to be a model how to deal with this opioid crisis effectively, with the drug court, the reduction of enabling drug users, increased treatment that is effective instead of 1 week sweat lodges that fail, or 3 month programs that have a high failure rate, and other supports to help deal with the cause of addiction.
We are moving in the right direction, harm reduction that we have seen in BC has failed! If it did work, then why do the numbers of fatal overdoses, the number of addicts, the number of homeless and the crimes committed, all increase every year?
Lethbridge is on the right track! We need to make some adjustments, get existing groups operating in this city to co-ordinate with each other to find better ways and we need to stop allowing the addicts free reign over our city to drink where they want, do drugs where they want, sleep where they want, steal what they want, destroy what they want, as they disrepect the very hands that feed and clothe them through taxes and donations! It is time we stop the destruction of our city and it’s reputation and we are on the right track if we just make a few changes. The crown and police need to be firm.
We will never get rid of addictions, but we will make it more manageable.
The costs to the taxpayers in this city alone in the past 3 years, including policing/fire/paramedics, social programs, DOT, the Watch, clean-up crews, hotels for quarantines, etc would be close to $35 million, consdervatively. The SCS alone after everything was totalled was close to $20 million.
Lethbridge businesses have been devasted in downtown, many lost due to the impacts of the addiction issues! We can do better!
Let’s hope we can get a Council in place this year to help us all take back our once clean and beautiful city and move on repatriating Galt Gardens, so we can go and enjoy Canada Day or other events we once could, such as the Rib Fest, which refuses to use it as a venue now because of the addiction issues.
Well said! It’s past time to stop enabling the illegal behaviors that happen in our city and province!