Thousands of people are expected to celebrate recovery and hear a message of hope at the 2019 Recovery Day B.C. Festival.
Canada’s largest addiction and mental health recovery festival returns to uptown New Westminster on Saturday, Sept. 7 from noon to 5 p.m. It features entertainment on four stages, TedX speakers who will do 15-minute talks related to mental health, addiction and wellness, food trucks, artisans, a kid’s zone and more than 100 abstinence-based service providers, harm reduction and health-care services, including naloxone training.
“This is a place for people that are struggling, so they can meet their service providers. This is a place for family members of people that are struggling because there is going to be a lot of family support groups – they can find different services and ask questions, they can listen to the speakers,” said Giuseppe Ganci, chair of Recovery Day. “And this is a place for people who have no addiction in the family whatsoever, simply to show support, that they support the recovery journey, that they support people getting help. And also as a prevention – you never know when you are going to need help.”
While addiction is a heavy topic, Ganci said recovery is to be celebrated.
“If we have communities working together and having the knowledge of what’s out there for help, we can get better,” said Ganci, who is also the director of community development for Last Door Recovery Society. “I remember myself when I was brand new, I didn’t know where the help was. I didn’t know it existed. I didn’t know what a group of 20 people being substance free was. Our goal, of all the people behind Recovery Day, is to have that optic – this is what it looks like.”
Trooper and SonReal are headlining this year’s street festival, with a number of other artists slated to perform at Recovery Day. Royal City Wrestling will also be entertaining crowds.
People who have lost a loved one are invited to bring a photos for the memorial tree that will be on display.
“Everyone, when they think about addiction, they think of the Downtown Eastside. We need to destroy that myth because the Downtown Eastside is the smallest part,” Ganci said. “There are so many people using drugs in other neighbourhoods, and Recovery Day is going to bring life to that and show that substance users aren’t just Downtown Eastside people – it’s everybody. It’s more than that.”
The festival comes on the heels of the third annual Recovery Capital Conference, which is taking place on Sept. 5 at Anvil Centre. It includes an exhibitor fair, workshops and speakers, including Steven Page, co-founder of the Barenaked Ladies.
“Steven Page is on because of his conversation with overcoming adversity and his challenges with mental health,” Ganci said. “A lot of people when they focus on addiction focus on the drug use, but mental health has to be at the forefront as well. His conversation is going to bring to light in the conference, if we work on mental wellness, we might just help solve some of these addiction issues that people have.”
The conference is geared toward health-care professionals and frontline workers, but a presentation taking place that night is open to community members. David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy, which is about a father’s journey through his son’s addiction.
“A lot of lived experiences stories we hear is from people who use substances. This is a story of someone who had a son that used drugs, enabled him, had to learn to love from a distance and had to help carry him through to recovery without being the person that actually sent him to rehab,” Ganci said. “It’s more a conversation on how to love from a distance and how to get through somebody else’s addiction.”
Sheff will speak about helping families and communities face drug use and addiction on Thursday, Sept. 5 at 6:30 p.m. at Anvil Centre. Tickets are $40 and available at Eventbrite.ca (search for solutions to addiction in the family with Beautiful Boy author David Sheff.)
“The community is what’s needed to end overdoses,” Ganci said. “By coming to Recovery Day or by coming to David Sheff, we’ll engage in conversations that make it OK to ask for help.”
New Westminster is the first of several Recovery Capital conferences taking place is September, with other events taking place in Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Halifax and Toronto.
“With overdose awareness day taking place tomorrow, a lot of focus is on addiction, and there should be a lot of focus on addictions, but I think what happens is we forget to talk about the hope part, that there is another side,” Ganci told the Record Aug. 29. “Millions of Canadians are actually substance free or recovered from their substance use issues. By focusing on our strengths, we can definitely come out of this addiction crisis.”
