People First Radio

From the works of deaf architect Adolf Loos to the psychiatric record of U.S. civil war veteran, Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy and Jenifer Barclay have been coordinating a team of authors exploring a wide range of topics in disability history. The pair are editors of Cripping The Archive, Disability, History, and Power. The spoke with People First […]

Downtown Eastside service provider First United released a law reform platform earlier this fall, calling for changes to the Residential Tenancy Act in B.C. Staff lawyer Vinson Shih spoke with People First Radio about the platform, which called for an end to pet bans in rentals, and the right for tenants to install cooling devices […]

When Shannon Donohoe-Simpson was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer in her thirties, she says it was a surprise. “ I was that person that was very healthy,” she said. “I was really into personal training and I thought I ate really healthy. So when I was diagnosed with cancer, I know not just […]

In her debut novel, Meg Todd explores difficult subject matter, covering themes like fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, inter-generational abuse, and sexual assault. Most Grievous Fault explores the story of Crystal, who is in her late 20s and mother of Becky, 14. The two live together in a small apartment in the city. Todd says she’s […]

Dr Shannon Charlebois is fed up with the prevalence of gambling advertising in professional sports broadcasts. “The situation is ticking me off. It’s ticking off lots of Canadians,” she said. Charlebois is medical editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She co-authored an editorial about gambling advertising and risks to youth. She referred to a […]

University of Guelph PhD candidate Olivia Peters has been studying Canadian women’s experiences of intimate partner stalking. Peters spoke with People First Radio to share insights from her research, which involved in depth interviews with 20 women who identified as having experienced stalking. Peters said some women had to feign fear to be taken seriously. […]

Speaking August 31 at an event in Parksville marking International Overdose Awareness Day, Greg Hemminger shared his story of opioid addiction and recovery. In the mid 2000s, Hemminger was working as a filmmaker. He says his first feature premiered at the New York International Film Festival when he was 22 years old. “Directing my second […]

Data from almost 40,000 youth in B.C. was used to create From Loot Boxes to Lottery Tickets, a report from the McCreary Centre Society exploring youth gaming and gambling in B.C. The report found 34% of youth surveyed had taken part in at least one of eight gambling or gaming activities for money. McCreary Centre […]

Sleep Country Canada and Listen Up Canada co-founder Gordon Lownds spoke with People First Radio about his experiences with cocaine addiction, which he’s documented in a new memoir called Cracking Up. According to his memoir, while he was in the work associated with the startup phase of Sleep Country, Lownds ended up in a relationship […]

Nicole Letourneau says that when things get difficult, instead of wishing she had a drink, she now thinks “ thank god I’m not drinking right now.” The lawyer who works with the Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario spoke with People First Radio about her experience recovering from alcohol addiction. Letourneau says she had been […]

Francis Baptiste is using music to share his experiences with addiction. “ I think addiction is something that thrives in secrecy and in stigma,” he said. “If you don’t talk about it, and if you don’t open up about it, then we all end up just kind of suffering in silence.” The Vancouver musician is getting […]

Trevor Botkin is drawing from his experiences in recovery to bring peer support to the world of construction. Botkin works with the Construction Foundation of British Columbia (CFBC) is involved in a project called The Forge, which is in the midst of transforming an old biker clubhouse in Langford into a support space for people […]

Cindy Blancher is a lawyer with the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee in Ontario, and before entering that career path, she was a registered nurse in a psychiatric hospital. She’s also an advocate around issues related to mental illness, although it’s a term she isn’t a fan of. “ I have a relative who […]

Mary Vaccaro is a faculty member in the school of social work at McMaster University in Hamilton. She’s also been working in the women’s shelter system since 2012. She spoke with People First Radio about her observations from those years of work. “ I think we need to know that many of the women that we […]

More than seven thousand times last year, people were released from Ontario jails with no recorded fixed address. It’s also estimated that 80 per cent of people in Ontario’s provincial jails are there on remand. Those are some of the details from a report from the John Howard Society of Ontario, called From Incarceration to […]

Michael Sellick lives in Nova Scotia and teaches crochet on YouTube to an audience of 1.3 million subscribers. It’s a hobby he says he first discovered when he was going through a difficult period in his youth. “Two weeks into  high school, I had no friends at all,” he said. “And I was unable to […]

University instructors Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby are the authors of Psychedelic Capitalism, a book that takes a critical look at the direction of the mainstreaming of psychedelic drugs, particularly within the medical system. “We began this work, I would say, with a sense of naive optimism, even enthusiasm that this psychedelic renaissance, this process […]

Cole Kennedy, a Phd student in neuropsychology at the University of Victoria, led newly published research aimed at improving healthcare for people with brain injuries experiencing homelessness and mental health and substance use issues. “We know that every brain injury is different, so the cookie cutter approach doesn’t work in terms of treatment as well […]

As a journalist and documentary maker, Luke Galati says he’s learned that good storytelling has a through line. “ It has something that takes you from the beginning, the middle to the end,” he said. In the two documentaries Galati has made about mental health, he says he’s been that through line. “Using myself as the […]

CRCL stands for “crisis response community led.” It’s a model for a team that brings lived experience and minimizes police involvement in mental health related crisis situations. CRCL used to be called Peer Assisted Care Team or PACT. It’s funded by the Province of British Columbia, developed, and administered by the Canadian Mental Health Association, […]

Janel Van Dongen is the founder of 100 Kids For Change Oceanside. It’s a group that brings youth together to support local charities. Inspired by similar groups in the area for men and women, 100 Kids members meet every three months. Each member brings a $10 donation, and a charity to nominate. At each meeting […]

About a year ago, Joanna Pozzulo of Carleton University started the Reading For Well-Being Community Bookclub. “ I wanted to use my background in psychology and research to really highlight for people books that I think might be useful, or at least interesting to read,” she said. “ It’s more around well being rather than trying to […]

Laura Eramian of Dalhousie University was the lead author on a study looking at the experiences of 21 Atlantic Canadians who identified as having no or very few friends. “There really was no single profile of a person who identified as having fewer no friends. We had participants ranging from their late teens up to […]

Rob Wipond, author of Your Consent is Not Required, visited Nanaimo for an author talk on his book, which takes a critical look at involuntary psychiatric treatment. Wipond says that in the late 90s, after voluntarily seeking treatment, his father was committed for a period of several months, which included experiences of forced electrocunvulsive therapy. “ This […]

Guelph On. resident Elaine Uskoski’s journey to becoming an author, coach, and speaker on the issue of video game addiction got started on Halloween in 2014. “ I got an SOS email from my son who was in his first semester of second year university,” Uskoski said. “He had been backed into a corner where he […]