Breaking the Silence

Written by Sam Fitzner

The sixth year of Breaking the Silence was scheduled to take place in Edmonton on June 6th. Then, as the now-familiar refrain goes, COVID-19 happened.

With only a couple months until the event–a free 5km walk and run with a focus on mental health–the organizing team had to decide whether hosting an event was still possible considering the constraints of social distancing. The question quickly became “how,” not “if.” “Our team felt it was important to persevere and get creative,” says cofounder Jag Atwal. “If we’ve learned anything from the past few months, it’s that having the right tools and support for our mental health is more important than ever. We wanted to help provide that to the community.”

Partnering with CASA Foundation and the Mental Health Foundation, the volunteer-led committee behind Breaking the Silence launched a reimagined event online from June 20th to 27th.

Instead of a collective 5km walk, participants were encouraged to get out and move on their own for at least an hour throughout the week. On social media, attendees enthusiastically shared encouraging messages and their journeys, walking, running, biking, and even rollerblading to meet their personal or fundraising goals.

Meanwhile, over 20 virtual mental health sessions streamed live over the course of the week, led by community experts (recorded versions of many of the sessions can be found here). Though physically distant, participants could connect online from afar.

For the first time individuals from not just Edmonton, but across Alberta (and even internationally), could participate. The expanded scope led to new connections made with mental health organizations across the province, allowing funds raised during the week to stay in each participant’s own community.

With over 1,000 individuals registered to walk and join virtual sessions, attendance stayed strong despite the event’s online pivot. Incredibly, funds raised during the 2020 event–$80K in total–quadrupled past years’ efforts. While revealing the capacity of the community to come together during crisis, the success of this year’s event also revealed the need to include accessible online options for future events; many participants noted that attending in person was not an option for them due to mental illness or geography.

Amidst a pandemic during which over half of surveyed Canadians reported worsened mental health¹, 2020 has been an important reminder for the Breaking the Silence team of why they founded this event 6 years ago: to honour the life of a friend lost to suicide and to provide the community the education they never had.

Says Raju Virk, one of the event’s co-founders, “We had no idea our friend was struggling. It’s said that 1 in 5 people are touched by mental illness, but we never thought losing a friend to suicide would happen to us.”

“We want to show people that there is help available. There is hope.”

¹ https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/200527/dq200527b-eng.htm