People First Radio

Rocky Sloan, a student at Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Secondary School, has a plan after receiving a Loran scholarship, worth up to $100,000. “It is my dream to become a doctor,” Sloan said. “Right now, I’m thinking family medicine. Hopefully come back and work here in Nanaimo after I get my MD.” It’s a goal Sloan […]

Keynote speaker and mental health advocate Jessica Ward-King says opening up about her mental health challenges in a public way was a difficult decision. “It was terrifying, but it was also very liberating because then when people ask me, ‘how are you doing?’ I could actually say, ‘not so great,’ and there would be an […]

At age 42, Opal Dar has hit a major milestone as an artist. “Until just a month ago, I haven’t been able to direct anyone to a link with my music,” Dar said.  “I’ve been on stage my whole life singing and doing music, also that whole time was caregiving children and people, and my […]

Addictions medicine specialist Dr. Kelsey Roden spoke with People First Radio at a pop up overdose prevention site near Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. “The toxic drug supply has gotten so toxic with so many additives and contaminants and high potency fentanyl, that sometimes the medications we have available in the hospital are just not […]

Before he was a four time Grey Cup champion, the first player to be the game’s MVP and Most Valuable Canadian at the same time, Andrew Harris was playing in Nanaimo with the Vancouver Island Raiders. Now retired, Harris has shared some of the challenges he faced growing up and during his career in a […]

The relationship between people and plants is at the root of Ethnobotanist Leigh Joseph’s work. “ In my Squamish teachings from that side of my family, it is taught that plants are relatives, that they are relations to us,” she said. “When I was going through my undergrad, which was in botany and biology, there really […]

Evelyn Thompson-George has been hoping someone would write about her father Art Thompson’s experience surviving abuse at the Alberni Indian Residential School. “ I’ve been trying for five years to get somebody to write this book about my dad. I was asking university professors. I was asking people that have written already, and my mom kind […]

Journalists Hal Newman and Chris Curtis have been exploring the intersections between poverty and the criminal justice system in Quebec, interviewing a number of people over the course of several months.. “ What we were finding is that people who get caught up in the system, their lives almost always get immeasurably worse,” Curtis said. In […]

Mental health researcher Yasmine Simone Gray says she identifies as a complex trauma survivor, and resists the label of having a mental illness. “ It’s a very particular push to try to label our distress as a disorder, and it really situates the problem within say my body, as opposed to say within the systems that […]

U.K. Barrister Nick Bano explores the themes covered in his book Against Landlords. Bano specializes in  representing homeless people and residential tenants and migrants in housing struggles. Bano says landlords were on their way to extinction in the U.K. through the start of the 1970s, but deregulation of the private rental sector and a sell […]

New York based solutions journalist and author Julia Hotz paid a visit to Nanaimo to talk social prescribing – a treatment modality that lets doctors put patients in touch with non medical supports to address unmet needs. Hotz says social prescribing comes from the idea that healthcare issues are being driven by things in our […]

Guaranteed basic income would reduce poverty in Canada by 40 per cent, according to analysis from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO). Guaranteed basic income(GBI) is a framework that would provide everyone with a minimum income, which would come in the form of regular payments from the government, using the tax system. There […]

At 81 years old, longtime Victoria resident Gene Miller says the problems facing society right now are unlike anything he’s ever lived through. “ Probably most alarmingly, everything having to do with environmental impacts and climate change, I’m very concerned about the spreading and growing impact of autocracy. I worry that as robotics expand that people […]

Almost six years ago, an accident in the kitchen left Kate Walker’s preschool aged son with a severe injury. Now, Walker wants to help other families going through the same experience. “ It was after a really lovely day on the ski hill that we came home and I was preparing, just kind of doing the […]

McMaster Associate Professor Iris Balodis is among a group of researchers raising concerns about Ontario’s approach around online gambling. “ I don’t think there’s anyone in Ontario that is unaffected by it, from hearing and seeing ads, to all the opportunities for play,” she said. “But we have very, very little idea of how things have […]

Now 19 years old, Victoria composer Camilo Aybar put the finishing touches on his first symphony in 2021. It wasn’t only composed during the pandemic, but inspired by it. The symphony features 5 movements, each representing a different phase of the pandemic: Outbreak, Lockdown, Restart Process, Variants of Concern, and Vaccine. Aybar’s story caught the […]

At age 12, Laetitia Satam started volunteering with Kids Help Phone, a Canadian charity which provides mental health support to youth through phone, text, and online services. “ I remember at that young age being like, why is talking about how you’re feeling not always socially acceptable?” She said. “And of course, when you’re a kid, […]

Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud is set to start a new role as senior advisor on ending chronic homelessness to Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. Earlier this month, the province announced a new plan to address chronic homelessness, including addressing encampments on a case by case basis. “ I think the core piece that this plan brings to the […]

“For five years, I was out on the streets homeless, and I struggled coming to the hospital because I never had anywhere to use,” said Comox Valley resident Heather Edward, who has been sober for eight months. “I procrastinated coming to the hospital for infections and stuff because I was scared that I was going […]

“Siblings, they kind of straddle this space between, you know, they’re family, but they’re also friends, or maybe they’re kind of frenemies,” said Stephanie Harrington. “It’s one of the early formative relationships you have in your life, and it’s a defining relationship in many ways.” Harrington’s brother Ian died in May 2020 from drug p...

“We think of stuff as being something that will give us freedom, happiness and all of the stuff that goes along with material belongings,” says Fred Cameron, who works on the senior management team at SOLID outreach in Victoria. “But when you’re out on the street, if you have too much stuff, it means you’re […]

Jade Oldfield works with the Chess For Life program at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, which sees youth involved in the province’s criminal justice system spend 25 hours studying the game of chess and learning to apply its principles to life. She says they’ve already got plenty of anecdotal evidence that the program has […]

The Victoria Hand Project is a charity that creates low cost prosthetic arms for lower income areas of the world. “Here in Victoria, we do the design, the engineering and the testing of the prosthetic arms,” said CEO Michael Peirone. “And then we partner with clinics in developing countries or conflict affected areas, and we […]

Edmonton resident Angelika Matson spoke with People First Radio about her experiences receiving electroconvulsive therapy. “All I heard online about ECT was that there was memory loss, and I was so scared that I was going to lose my memories,” she said. “I remember crying on the phone with my mom saying my memories make […]

Sandy Ernest Allan started on the path to becoming a journalist focused on mental health after receiving a 60 page, typewritten manuscript in the mail from a reclusive relative. “I had an uncle who assigned me to write a book about his life,” he said. “And that happened to include his schizophrenia diagnosis and his […]