Jackson fights suicide with workshops, autographs

SARA MINOGUE

Tom Jackson wrapped up his Dreamcatcher North of 60 tour yesterday, leaving warm feelings and thousands of autographs in communities across Nunavut.

For the last seven years, the singer and actor, also known as Chief Peter Kenidi on CBC’s North of 60, has visited schools and community centres across Canada to host youth workshops about stress, mental health, suicide prevention and coping.

“What we try and emphasize is that, as tragic as it is, there are many things that communities are doing that are quite positive and will work over time,” says David Masecar, president for the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, and co-host of the workshops.

“People are reclaiming going out on the land and how important that is to them. A number of communities are re-emphasizing the importance of country food. There’s a Nunavut suicide prevention council that I think will play an important role.”

The workshops, called “We have something important to discuss,” are designed for youth from grade seven to grade 12, and the message is tailored accordingly.

Jackson and Masecar begin each workshop by asking students questions about stress, how they cope with it, and how they can help others cope. The answers are collected and later distributed back to the students as print-outs.

“The message is that it’s their message,” Masecar says. “It’s not like we’re airlifting stuff in. The knowledge that we’re collecting is their knowledge.”

The goal is to get students to understand that they can play a role in suicide prevention, and that even small changes have an effect.

Masecar describes one workshop that took place in a small, crowded room. When he noticed that students were fanning themselves to cool down, he asked everyone if they were feeling hot and tired. All of the students put up their hands.

He asked everyone to stand up and take two deep breaths. Then he asked the students if they felt different. All of them did.

“Even a small change makes a difference,” he says. “If you reduce the pain just a little, the vast majority choose to live. That doesn’t mean their problems have disappeared.”

There have been five suicides in Nunavut since the tour began, one of which occurred in a community scheduled for a visit the next day.

Community representatives met to discuss whether or not the workshops should go ahead. They decided Jackson should appear as scheduled.

Masecar rejects the idea that the workshops may have contributed to the tragedies.

“It’s an old-standing myth and we feel the opposite is true – if you don’t talk about suicide, you leave people isolated with their thoughts about suicide.”

He compares the fear of talking about suicide to the fear of talking about cancer in the early 1980s.

“At some point people started to take that risk, and more people are alive today because we continue to talk about cancer.”

“Often times we talk about the fact that there’s a suicide spirit invading communities, taking lives and taking the voices of generations,” Masecar says. “The most important way of weakening this is to talk about it and find ways to cope when life gets down, distressed, hurtful, painful… The more that you can do that, the more it will weaken this.”

The workshops also emphasize the importance of grieving.

“In Western society, there has been a real loss of recognition about grief and how long it takes,” Masecar says.

Some communities, Masecar learned, have grievers “who will join the family at the casket and support the expressions of grief that they need to do and will continue to visit the family for a long time.”

“The challenge is if you have death after death after death and you don’t have the time in between, then a lot of [the grieving process] gets cut short in addition to the acculturation that’s happened, which has taken away people’s cultural rituals for managing loss and grief, you’re sort of left with an even further shortcutting.”

“Those losses over time contribute to the accumulation of pain. Eventually, one of the things that predicts suicide is suicide. Then the most difficult thing is making people aware that it can get better.”

Yesterday was the final day of a three-week tour that stopped in 16 Nunavut communities, from Arviat to Resolute Bay and from Cambridge Bay to Qikiqtarjuaq. Stops in Igloolik and Kimmirut were cancelled due to weather.

Every community offered a warm reception to the Jackson and Masecar, and in many of them, students asked for Jackson’s autograph.

A blank space on the back of the brochures being distributed for the Kamatsiaqtut Baffin Crisis Line was the perfect place to leave a signature.

“We’ve given out thousands of them by now, and many of them have Tom’s signature on them, which means they’ll keep them.”

The Nunavut Association of Municipalities wants to see similar workshops take place in the communities every year. On May 3, NAM passed a resolution to ask the Government of Nunavut to hold annual workshops to help residents deal with suicide.

You can reach the Kamatsiaqtut Baffin Crisis Line by calling 867-979-3333 during a crisis, or calling 1-800-265-3333 between 9 – 12 p.m.