Family of Indigenous B.C. youth who died in care say they believe she froze to death
The family of an Indigenous teenager in provincial care who died in Port Alberni, B.C., wants answers from those responsible for her well-being.
Chantelle Williams, 18, was found outside and unresponsive by a passerby in the 4900 block of Ian Avenue during the early hours of Jan. 28.
Williams was in the guardianship care of Usma Nuu-chah-nulth Family and Child Services and living in a group home run by Inside Out Care Corporation when she died.
Her family says it believes she froze to death.
Environment Canada records for Jan 28 show that temperatures dropped below – 5 C, – 7 C with the wind chill.
Two ambulances attended Williams at 5:09 a.m. PT, according to B.C. Emergency Health Services spokesperson Bowen Osoko. She was taken to hospital in critical condition and later pronounced dead.
The location where Williams was found is only a few blocks from her group home, according to her family.
"Usma told us she died of natural causes. It seemed strange because she was so young," said Williams' aunt Shannon Nookemus.
"That just doesn't sit with everybody because she's 18 years old," said Williams' uncle Sean Walls. "Dies of a natural cause at 18?"
Another uncle says the family remains in the dark as to why his niece was outside that night.
"Somebody has to come out and tell the truth on what happened and who's at fault, and, you know, a simple apology. There has been nothing of that sort," said Martin Watts.
The B.C. Coroners Service said the investigation into the cause of death is still open and active. Police are treating Williams' death as non-criminal pending the outcome of the coroner's investigation, according to RCMP Sgt. Chet Carrol.
Usma Nuu-chah-nulth Family and Child Services is a delegated agency of the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD).
Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (NTC) president Judith Sayers, who speaks for Usma, said in an email to CBC News: "The death of every child is heartbreaking and tragic. The NTC expresses our deepest heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and community at the loss of a child."
Sayers said Usma would co-operate with MCFD, the Representative for Children and Youth, and others "in any other relevant process."
CBC News did not receive a response to multiple emails and phone calls to the owners of Inside Out Care Corporation.
According to the family, Williams had been in hospital for an unspecified reason in the hours before she was found on Ian Avenue.
She was brought back from the hospital to the group home by someone, the family is unsure who, but then left the group home undetected.
'Should have been under supervision'
"I think the foster parent or whoever would be keeping an eye on her if she was just released from the hospital, right? She should have been under supervision," said Walls. "We would like to know who she was going to meet and why the group home didn't have an eye watching her."
Williams's grandfather said the two had plans to meet the following day to go shopping at Walmart and have lunch at their favourite restaurant. He wonders why no one at the group home noticed she was missing.
"[Usma staff] could have driven down the road and found her on the sidewalk," said George Nookemus. "I asked that question: 'Did you look for her?' They didn't answer me."
Williams was of Huu-ay-aht and Ahousaht ancestry.
'Bright smile, loving heart'
In announcing her death on social media, family members wrote: "It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved daughter/niece, Chantelle Destiny Williams. Her bright smile, loving heart, and infectious laugh will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved her."
Watts said Williams was "her own little free spirit" who liked to hang out with friends. She would have turned 19 in April.
"She was a few months away from aging out, which was the tough thing for us to understand," said Watts. "How could somebody not be cared enough for until she turned 19 … She didn't reach that goal."
As part of a longer statement to CBC News, Jodie Wickens, Minister of Children and Family Development, said she is unable to comment on a specific child or youth in care because of confidentiality.
"What I can say is that when a child or youth dies in care, my expectation as the minister and as a mother is that we get to the truth of why and how it happened."
Wickens said a practice review of care providers is automatic when a child or youth in care dies.
B.C. Children's Representative Jennifer Charlesworth said in a lengthy email she is taking steps "to ensure lessons are learned and action is taken to prevent further harms and losses."
"We have undertaken an initial review and gathered documentation to learn more about the circumstances surrounding this young person's life and ultimate death in order to determine what action can be taken to inform practice and responsiveness both at the community level and across the broader system."
Charlesworth said her office cannot undertake a formal investigation into Williams' death for at least a year or until the B.C. Coroners Service and other authorities — including MCFD — have completed their inquiries.
Usma was the agency responsible for the guardianship of Dontay Patrick Lucas, a six-year-old Indigenous boy who was tortured and killed by his mother and stepfather only four months after Usma staff moved him from a foster home into their care.
The couple was sentenced to 15 years in prison each after being found guilty of manslaughter last year. The public has never learned what checks were done by Usma staff before and after the little boy was moved into the home.
Last year, when Dontay's case was in the news, B.C. Premier David Eby pledged that British Columbians would "get the answers they need."
CBC asked Eby's for comment on Williams' death and was referred by his office to the response from Minister Wickens.
Charlesworth's office last year released Don't Look Away, a report chronicling the torture, abuse and beating death in 2021 of a First Nations boy at the hands of extended family foster parents.
A follow-up report found chronic understaffing of MCFD social workers and a high degree of stress, fear and burnout within the social worker ranks.
According to MCFD, work is being done to "strengthen oversight and accountability," including:
Creating a new Indigenous child welfare director position and a new provincial child and youth well-being plan.
Increasing the child welfare workforce by 20 per cent.
Improved timelines around home visits to ensure that child welfare workers are connecting with families and children on a regular basis.
New digital reporting and strengthening of practice support and oversight.
Commenting generally on Chantelle Williams' death, Charlesworth pointed to the "deep and lasting trauma of residential schools, with the legacy of the Alberni Indian Residential School being particularly deeply felt.
"It is very easy to blame one person or one agency for the death of a young person, however as we see time and time again, and what appears to be emerging in this young person's story, there is a complex interplay of missed opportunities and incomplete or unco-ordinated systemic responses that lead to tragedy," said Charlesworth.
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Toronto Star
5 hours ago
- Toronto Star
‘Pretendian' or ‘victim': Inside this would-be Ontario lawyer's attempt to remake a life built on fraud
Before the headlines, Nadya Gill's life was filled with promise. Originally from the GTA, she played on Canada's youth national soccer team. At 16, she entered university in the U.S. on athletic scholarships, where she excelled on the pitch and in the classroom and earned the first of five post-secondary degrees. A coach told a Connecticut TV station her competitive drive could easily lead her to becoming a lawyer, a doctor, or 'a UN ambassador.' She graduated from law school, where she won awards and worked summers at the Crown law office in Toronto. After passing the bar exam, she landed a dream articling position at a sports law firm. It allowed her to work remotely and play professional soccer in Norway. Then came the rumblings online; her life fell apart — and she had to pick a new name. 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Contributors Opinion The violence of pretending to be Indigenous The recent call for organizing a Canada-wide dialogue about Indigenous identity by the First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) is a solid step Contributors Opinion The violence of pretending to be Indigenous The recent call for organizing a Canada-wide dialogue about Indigenous identity by the First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) is a solid step To many, Nadya's successes were a slap in the face and a reminder of the harm caused by more famous Canadians who've been exposed for falsely claiming to be Indigenous. In March 2024, Toronto Life magazine published an exposé on the family under the headline, 'The Great Pretenders: How two faux-Inuit sisters cashed in on a life of deception.' It went to press before a judge in Iqaluit sentenced Manji to three years in prison and called the twins 'victims.' On a warm sunny morning this past week in an Etobicoke park not far from where she grew up, the Star spoke with Nadya Gill under her new name, Jordan Archer, about her involvement in Canada's first criminal case of Indigenous identity fraud. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW It's the first time she has spoken publicly about the scandal that she says has destroyed her life. In the basic facts, Archer's story is this: She's a first-generation Canadian, born to a mother who immigrated from Tanzania and lived for only a brief period in Nunavut. Her father, Gurmail Gill, is British. No member of the family is Inuit, nor of Indigenous background. Still, Archer says, the story the public thinks they know is wrong — not that her version will convince everyone who sees her as a villain. For the first time since the scandal broke in 2023, Jordan Archer speaks about being at the centre of Canada's first criminal case of Indigenous identity fraud. The daughter of a 'proven fraudster' 'How would you have expected me to know,' Archer says, referring to her teenage self while sitting on a park bench in athletic wear after jumping off an old hybrid bike. 'Put yourself in my shoes. If your mom came up to you, gave you the story, with proof.' 'Proof,' Archer says, was the Inuit enrolment card her mother applied for — by outright fraud — in February 2016, when Archer was 17 and already going to school in the U.S. Like many teens, Archer says she was only too happy to let her mother handle all her applications, finances and logistics. Manji was controlling, the kind of 'soccer mom' who would scold her daughter after a match if she hadn't performed up to her standards. She was also someone a judge would call a 'habitual and persistent fraudster.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW At the time she filed the false applications, Manji was already facing serious fraud charges. In August 2017, she was sentenced to defrauding the charity March of Dimes, her longtime employer, of $850,000, for which she received a non-custodial sentence after reimbursing $650,000. Karima Manji, seen after her arrest in the March of Dimes fraud case. Toronto Police Service As unlikely as it may sound — the case was publicized — Archer says she wasn't aware of those charges until much later. At the time, she was living in the U.S. and had distanced herself from her mom, who still controlled many of her life decisions. She returned home from school in the U.S. at 20, which is when Manji told her: 'You're going to Saskatchewan … to a program where you'll do property law in the summer. It's for Indigenous students.' That's when, she says, Manji presented her with 'officially issued proof' — the Inuit enrolment card — and told her 'the story.' Manji had lived in Iqaluit in the '90s and had grown close to an Inuit family. That much was true. As her mother explained, when the father became ill with cancer, Manji took care of a daughter. That connection, Manji lied, had made her eligible for Inuit enrolment and, by extension, so were her daughters. Should Archer have questioned things? Maybe. But she says she believed her mother. In the interview, she likened the logic of her mom's explanation to a marriage — it wasn't a blood tie but 'a connection.' (In retrospect, this explanation is nonsense. To qualify, an applicant must both be Inuk according to Inuit customs and identify as an Inuk.) ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Still, Archer emphasizes that she accepted and embraced the connection she now thought she had — believing in some way that 'I belonged to the Iqaluit community.' She says she immersed herself in learning about Indigenous culture and participated in ceremonies, activities and educational sessions. She volunteered for the Akwesasne Community Justice Program and facilitated Kairos blanket exercises where participants step into roles of Indigenous groups throughout Canadian history. If she knew about the fraud, why would she do that, she asks. 'I think if you're trying to hide something, you stay under the radar.' As for what the card meant, Archer says she was kept in the dark as her mom secured tens of thousands of dollars for her education. 'I know the card gets you benefits, you have some kind of status with it, but I had no idea what (Manji) was doing with it.' Who questions their parents about things that happened before they were born, she asks? 'I know my dad's from England … I didn't say, 'Show me your birth certificate.'' 'Our communities are small, we know each other' The Iqaluit RCMP charged both Manji and the twins with defrauding the NTI — the organization tasked with enrolling Inuit children under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement — in September 2023. As is often the case with fraud, the big lie ended up being trivially easy to disprove. Manji had written on the application forms that Nadya and Amira were the birth daughters of a real Inuk woman named Kitty Noah, and then the application was approved without a shred of proof. (While there's no question her mother 'dug this hole,' Archer asks how the bogus application forms could have been accepted without a birth certificate.) ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Manji then used the girls' status cards to apply for benefits from Kakivak Association, an organization that, among other things, provides sponsorship funding to help Inuit students from Baffin Island pay for education. By early 2023, while Archer was articling and had already played in Norway, social media users began questioning the story of the successful 'Inuit' sisters from Toronto with the South Asian names. 'Our communities are small, we know each other. We know of each other and our families. There are only around 70,000 of us in Canada,' famed Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq wrote in a tweet asking how the twins could get scholarships meant for Inuit students. 'The resources and supports are limited.' In late March 2023, a reporter with Nunatsiaq News asked Amira to respond to the social media allegations. In a statement, Amira passed on Manji's story, that the twins' 'Inuit family ties' were through a family her mother had lived with. (Amira Gill declined to be interviewed for this story. 'My sister has chosen to keep her life personal, away from the public eye,' Archer said when asked about her twin.) But that's not what Manji put on the form; NTI soon released a statement that Noah was not the twins' birth mother and asked the RCMP to investigate. Kitty Noah has since died. When she found out she'd been listed on the application, she was 'flabbergasted,' her son later told CBC. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Why Jordan Archer wants to tell her story Today, Archer says she struggles to make ends meet. She's working part-time at a hockey rink as a community service representative, 'directing people to the lost and found.' A Zamboni driver recently asked about her background. 'How much time do you have?' Archer told him, recalling the exchange. 'No matter what career I try to explore, I don't want this to come back.' Michelle Mengsu Chang/ Toronto Star She lost friends along with her articling job. In the wake of the case, the Law Society of Ontario initiated an investigation into her status as a lawyer. To practise law in Ontario, applicants for a licence must be of 'good character'; Archer feels she has no choice but to abandon a law career, at least at this point. She says she used to be puzzled when people described being debilitated by stress, but 'now, I really, really do understand. There were months when I wouldn't move or go anywhere.' Last fall, Archer thought she'd found a lifeline and signed a contract to play pro soccer. She felt she had been forthright about her past before signing but, ultimately, the league decided to rescind its approval of the contract. She was devastated. But it was also a 'turning point' — the realization she had to do something to try to clear the air and provide a 'fulsome' picture of the story. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'No matter what career I try to explore, I don't want this to come back.' She's since written a memoir, titling it 'When Life Conspired Against Me.' A summary provided to the Star described the book as an examination of the toll of the public backlash that destroyed her professional reputation. She's 'a victim of online bullying and was crucified in the media, despite not being involved in the fraud,' the summary reads. (The book does not have a publisher.) 'I'm serving a life sentence for a crime I didn't commit,' Archer says in a prepared blurb. 'I was the victim, but that means nothing when the court of public opinion plays both judge and executioner. In their story, I'm the villain, and that's all that matters.' Looking back, Archer says she now knows her mom would have pursued any chance at an advantage. 'She saw, you know, a bureaucratic loophole and she just went for it,' she says. 'Whether it was an Indigenous community or any other community, she would have just gone for it.' Confronting her mom was 'one of the hardest things I've ever had to do,' she told the Star in the days after the interview. Their relationship is messy, she adds. 'She didn't just hurt me, she detonated my life … and yet she's my mom.' She feels a 'heavy, inescapable obligation' to still be there for her mother, but 'supporting her didn't mean forgetting the harm. It didn't mean pretending everything was OK.' 'She trusted me 120 per cent' Soon after Manji pleaded guilty last year, the Crown withdrew the charges against Nadya and Amira. In response, the then-president of NTI called the withdrawal of charges against the twins 'unacceptable.' The twins 'benefitted from their mother's fraud scheme, and yet their role in the scheme will go unanswered,' Aluki Kotierk told Toronto Life. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW There's little chance Archer's story will convince anyone who believes she should have known. 'How can they say they didn't know they were not Inuit,' one First Nations advocate wrote on X. To those skeptics, Archer says she never claimed to be Inuk by blood; that was her mom's lie. Still, she hopes the doubters read the judge's words. Canada 'Egregious exploitation': Toronto woman sentenced to 3 years for Inuit identity fraud Karima Manji, who is not Indigenous, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000, after her twin daughters used fake Inuit status to receive Canada 'Egregious exploitation': Toronto woman sentenced to 3 years for Inuit identity fraud Karima Manji, who is not Indigenous, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000, after her twin daughters used fake Inuit status to receive 'The true victims of Ms. Manji's crime are the Inuit of Nunavut,' Iqaluit judge Mia Manocchio wrote. Manji 'defrauded the Inuit of Nunavut by stealing their identity. She has further victimized the Noah family and the memory of Kitty Noah. This is an egregious example of the exploitation of Indigenous Peoples.' 'Finally,' Manocchio continued, 'Ms. Manji has victimized her own children, her two daughters, whose lives and careers have been severely compromised by her fraud.' Manji is now serving a three-year sentence — a term that, the judge wrote, serves as 'a signal to any future Indigenous pretender that the false appropriation of Indigenous identity in a criminal context will draw a significant penalty.' Manji was also ordered to pay back $28,254 — what remained after she had already reimbursed $130,000. (Not that the 'proven fraudster' deserved any credit for paying back the fruits of her crimes, Manocchio wrote — 'if such were the case, then a fraudster with means could essentially buy their way into a reduced prison term, whereas an impecunious fraudster would serve the longer term.') Reached by phone at a halfway house, where she was in the middle of drywalling, Manji, 60, insisted to the Star that Nadya — she doesn't call her Jordan — was unaware of the scheme. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I never, ever said a word to Nadya,' she said. 'She trusted me 120 per cent, if you can imagine, when this all started, she was in the States … her whole focus was on soccer.' Manji said she is appalled by the hurt she caused not only to Inuit communities, but to her own children, 'especially Nadya.' (The girls have an older brother.) While serving some of her sentence at Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Manji said it would take weeks to read her daughter's letters, because 'I just feel so awful.' Unprompted, Manji offers up an explanation for her actions: She was brought up in a strict, conservative family and believed that if you were a doctor, lawyer or engineer, 'you would do fine in life.' She had an unhappy upbringing and marriage and wanted to make sure her kids didn't go through that. 'If I made sure they were successful in terms of their education and career, that they wouldn't have to have gone through what I've gone through,' she says.
Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Police chief expresses desire for advanced-tech stun guns to replace officers' firearms
The head of the Winnipeg Police Service hopes stun guns can help reduce the use of more lethal force, eventually to the point officers no longer need guns. 'Those alternate weapons, intermediate weapons, they save lives. And the technology is just advancing rapidly, where my hope is one day that we never have a shooting where someone's lost their life,' said WPS Chief Gene Bowers. 'So, if that's the use of leveraging technology, I hope one day it gets to there, that firearms aren't a needed weapon.' Bowers' comments followed the release of an annual use of force report, which notes WPS officers used Tasers 524 times last year, including 221 instances in which the devices were presented and/or used to coerce someone, 216 times stun-gun probes were deployed (for use over a longer distance) and 87 times when the weapons were used to 'push stun' (applied while pressing the device against someone.) MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Police chief Gene Bowers said Tasers offer a safer alternative to guns. The combined use is up from a five-year average of 262 times per year since 2019, and 302 total uses in 2023. Bowers said Tasers offer a safer alternative to guns. 'Any time that we're not using deadly force is a good thing,' he said. The latest Tasers can subdue a person from a further distance away, increasing their effectiveness, he noted. In 2024, police either presented a weapon or used force in 968 incidents, or 0.4 per cent of 239,903 total dispatches, up from 0.33 per cent the previous year. Serious incidents included six officer-involved shootings and four fatalities last year. While the chief highlighted benefits of stun-gun use, a local law professor cautioned against framing Tasers as a safe tool, which could lead police to use them more readily. 'There is a risk with this perception that Tasers are essentially not lethal weapons. They should be considered as less-lethal weapons, they're less likely to result in death,' said Brandon Trask, an associate professor of law at the University of Manitoba. He noted deaths in North America has been linked to Tasers, which he said are more dangerous for people who are intoxicated by drugs or have a heart condition. 'A pretty major electrical current going through their body can result in some pretty horrific outcomes,' said Trask. He expressed doubt that police could completely end their reliance on guns, since they are at risk of facing much more lethal weapons on the job. 'It's very ambitious to think that this advancement in this area of technology is going to be a huge game-changer,' he said. Meanwhile, the police chief also shed light on several other key WPS files. When asked if he personally supported calls to search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of two Indigenous women slain by a serial killer before he became the chief of police, Bowers said he did. 'I've always been supportive of a search, an advocate of that,' he said. Bowers served as WPS deputy chief in charge of investigations when the decision was made to not search Prairie Green for the remains of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris, which was met with intense community backlash. A search eventually did begin late last year and has since located both women's remains. Bowers also revealed that police are still pursuing a plan to track race-based data of people officers interact with and will hire an external Indigenous consultant who will work on that file. 'It would be an external consultant to help with reconciliation, to help with partnerships (with) the Indigenous community… to ensure that we're doing things that aren't offensive or causing issues with the community,' he said. In a separate update, police also noted the Manitoba Integrated Violent Offender Apprehension Unit, a joint effort of WPS and the RCMP, has now made 730 arrests. The unit aims to crack down on violent and prolific offenders. Bowers noted two federal changes he'd like to see to help reduce the number of people who commit repeated acts of violence. 'If someone's to the point where they're utilizing firearms, machetes and causing harm to citizens… consideration to the release should be really considered. If they do reoffend, there should be something in place where they should be detained in custody until they can have their hearing… that's bail reform,' said Bowers. Weekday Mornings A quick glance at the news for the upcoming day. The federal government should also explore imposing mandatory minimum sentences for some offences linked to using firearms and other dangerous weapons, such as machetes, he said. The police chief also supports creating a 24-hour sobering or detox unit for first responders to take people experiencing drug-related psychosis. 'I think there's a great need for somewhere where we can take people that they're safe and other people are safe… if they're in a psychosis…. It's just working through the logistics of it and getting it in place,' he said. X: @joyanne_pursaga Joyanne PursagaReporter Joyanne is city hall reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. A reporter since 2004, she began covering politics exclusively in 2012, writing on city hall and the Manitoba Legislature for the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in early 2020. Read more about Joyanne. Every piece of reporting Joyanne produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CBC
a day ago
- CBC
Men are not OK, report on premature deaths in Canada suggests
About 44 per cent of men living in Canada die prematurely, according to a new report from the Movember Institute of Men's Health. The report defines premature mortality as deaths in men before age 75. The deaths from cancer, coronary heart disease, accidents, suicide and the opioid crisis include some causes that might have been prevented through vaccinations, lifestyle changes like quitting smoking or avoiding injuries. In 2023, almost 75,000 males died prematurely, according to Statistics Canada. "We're here because too many men are dying too young from largely preventable causes," Catherine Corriveau of Movember Canada said at a news conference on Parliament Hill on Thursday. Suicide was the fourth leading cause of premature death in males after cancer, coronary heart disease and accidents. Three in four of the deaths by suicide in Canada were men, Corriveau said. While the report looks at the health needs of men overall, the group noted those statistics were much worse for Indigenous men or men living in vulnerable communities. Stigma, gender bias and low health literacy are long-standing barriers that often prevent men from seeking care until it's too late, the report's authors said. The impact extends to families, communities and the economy. Fathers and sons learn together Niigaan Sinclair, a co-author of the report and professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, said one solution is to have fathers and sons learn together. He gave an example during a recent fathers' weekend where he spoke and saw boys and men who grew up without fathers or uncles learning skills like how to tie their shoes, do a puzzle or build a lodge together. "That young man who has become a father, he too didn't learn that because he wasn't able to, because many of those ceremonies in his community were gutted and removed," said Sinclair, who is also the son of the late Senator Murray Sinclair, the first Indigenous person appointed as a judge in Manitoba and chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools. "Making mistakes together, learning humility together, learning to laugh together at themselves, but then ultimately making something together that they could be proud of. That's truly what I think a goal would be for any program that would teach healthy Indigenous masculinity or Indigenous manhood." WATCH | Black men discuss Black masculinity, dating and fatherhood: Black men's mental health and the healing power of community 1 year ago Duration 6:47 Khan Bouba-Dalambaye and Sheldon Lewis, the co-facilitators of the Black Men's Wellness program run by the Black Healing Centre, have been sharing their experiences with other Black men like Kerwins Saint-Jean, addressing a wide range of topics such as identity, dating, fatherhood and Black masculinity. Those lessons could help men avoid outcomes like jail, hospitalization or premature death, Sinclair said, while also benefiting families and their communities. The report also suggests embracing the power of sport to promote health. Experiences with seeking help The report's authors also analyzed national mortality trends. Previously, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) said deaths from preventable causes were twice that for men than women. The Movember report included a nationally representative poll of more than 1,500 men on their experiences engaging with primary care. Only about 48 per cent of respondents said they felt actively listened to during a first health-care interaction. "If they don't feel listened to and if they don't feel cared for, they might not show up again," Corriveau said. Dr. Vincent Agyapong, a professor and head of psychiatry at Dalhousie University, said he was surprised by that finding. "It reflects that health-care providers need to listen more empathetically," said Agyapong, who was not involved in the report and welcomed the authors' multi-pronged approach to mental health that isn't one-size-fits-all. "It's always very difficult for men to reach out and seek help," Agyapong said. Prioritize mental health literacy When men do seek help, Agyapong said, it's important that health-care providers are sensitive and focus on the main concern that brought the person in off the bat, instead of launching into a checklist of background questions. Agyapong said schools and workplaces should prioritize mental health literacy, providing men with resources to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental disorders and know they are treatable with medications and psychological approaches. Mental health promotion for men at risk will lead to more people seeking healthcare such as psychological help earlier on when they are distressed rather than trying to manage themselves or turning to alcohol and drugs, which can be risk factors themselves, Agyapong said. Corriveau said Canada has an opportunity to address the challenges of health promotion by developing a national men's health strategy to respond to their health-care needs. Australia and the U.K. have already done so.
