International Overdose Awareness Day 2019 will see B.C. events take a political but subdued tone, activists say

published on August 27, 2019 by Travis Lupick in Georgia Straight

Earlier this month, Leslie McBain travelled to Kelowna to spend time with a woman who had lost a first and then a second son to drug overdoses.

“She’s a good friend and she goes up and down, so I was there to take care of her,” McBain recounted in a telephone interview.

McBain is a founding member of Moms Stop the Harm (MSTH), a national group of parents who have lost family members to Canada’s overdose crisis. While she was in Kelowna, MSTH members there came up with an idea they hoped would draw attention to the health emergency. They partnered with a photographer named Nicole Richard and McBain went with them. The women carried crosses and gathered in a field of tall grass that overlooks Okanagan Lake. And there they remembered their children…