City of Powell River councillors were invited to participate in the Walk With Me action research project, which was spurred on by the toxic drug crisis.
At the September 12 city council meeting, Courtney Harrop, the harm reduction coordinator for Tla’amin Nation and a member of the qathet Community Action Team since 2019, appeared before councillors. She said the purpose of her delegation was to invite mayor and council to attend a story walk, which is a two-hour experiential learning journey, where those assembled will listen to stories regarding the toxic drug crisis and together imagine ways forward.
“We know that Powell River, Tla’amin and the entire qathet region, as well as small and large communities throughout BC, have been impacted in devastating ways by the toxic drug crisis,” said Harrop. “We know, since 2016, when the crisis was labelled a provincial health emergency, more than 79 people from qathet region have lost their lives to this crisis.
“While these numbers have started to decline in recent years, a fact that speaks perhaps to efforts made by people of this community, to provide support and resources to keep people alive, our work is far from over. The gains we have made are tenuous at best in the sense that people in this community are still struggling and still dying as a result of this crisis.”
Harrop said she was appearing before council to invite them to join in the learning journey that includes Powell River mayor and council, and Tla’amin’s hegus, council and legislators, with the intention to bring these two governance bodies together in order to seek collaboration and avenues where shared vision and an approach to resolving this crisis can be developed.
Harrop said over the past 10 months, the Walk With Me project, consisting of people with lived and living experience with substance use, and others, such as community research workers, having been working in partnership with the community action team, with herself as the coordinator, to record and document stories of the crisis here.
“The Walk With Me team, which originated in the Comox Valley in 2019, is hosted by Vancouver Island University, and has been working in communities throughout Vancouver Island and BC to document the impact of the crisis,” said Harrop. “In January 2024, the Walk With Me team began to invite people with lived and living experience with substance use in Tla’amin, Powell River and the qathet region, through processes involving consent, to share their stories of the crisis and their visions of ways forward for our community. The team hosted eight recording sessions between January and July 2024 and 26 people contributed stories to this process.
“In August 2024, the Walk With Me team worked together to weave the stories into three audio tracks, 40-minute tracks that are designed to be played as part of the story walk experience.”
Harrop said the qathet Community Action Team, along with partners and collaborators, is working with Walk With Me to schedule a series of story walks for the community, which will take place during the fall of 2024 and winter of 2025. She said these walks provide an opportunity for community members from all backgrounds to gather together to understand the dimensions of the crisis here in this region, and to imagine ways forward together.
During the story walk, participants will be introduced to the project and work with the Walk With Me team, said Harrop.
There will be a 40-minute audio walk outdoors. Following the walk, participants will sit in a circle and have shared dialogue about what was learned and potential solutions moving forward, according to Harrop.
She encouraged people to visit the Walk With Me website at walkwithme.ca.
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