People First Radio

Victoria filmmaker Cory Thibert says he never saw a family like his depicted on screen, which was the starting point for his debut narrative feature film, Mildlife. “ Both of my parents live with cerebral palsy,” he said, “I’ve never seen that represented.” Thibert spoke with People First Radio about the film, which had its Canadian […]

Clown Fish tells the story of Paul Tedeschini’s journey through life as an actor moving across Canada and navigating various emotional challenges. The show is being performed by Tedeschini at Nanaimo’s OV Arts Centre through March 1st. He visited the CHLY studio, along with the show’s director Nicolle Nattrass, to speak about it. Clown Fish […]

North Cowichan resident Royce Warren has spent much of his life working in resource industries. “I’ve been a forester, I’ve been a miner, I’ve been a commercial fisherman. I’ve farmed for a number of years,” he said. “A lot of that was earlier on in my life and I decided to go to university and […]

Priya Sharma and Kayleigh Busch met working in the field of mental health and substance use support in Victoria. The pair say they consistently noticed a need among the population they serve. “Time and time again, we work with individuals who show that they’re motivated and they’re putting in all of this work to wanna […]

The manager of a Nanaimo supportive housing site says that almost one year on from breaking ground, the community is coming together around 1030 Old Victoria Road. “Even those folks that were coming in with those tricky questions in the early days are wanting to be a part of what we’re doing here,” said Dolly […]

Dr. Alexandre Hudon, a Medical psychiatrist, clinician-researcher and clinical assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and addictology at the Université de Montréal spoke with the program about the potential interplay between psychosis and generative AI, a topic he also explored in an article in The Conversation. “ Psychosis is a state where a person will […]

Toronto based freelance journalist Zahra Khozema spoke with the program about her evolving relationship with the gym, and her decision to give up her membership, via what she called one of the most difficult emails she sent in 2025. “ What made me send that email was I think a mix of burnout and guilt and […]

Nanaimo playwright Joëlle Rabu is bringing dementia to the spotlight with a show that hits the stage at the Malaspina theater later this month. Set in a dementia care facility, I Don’t Belong Here: Stories and Songs at the Edge of Forgetting is portrayed through the eyes of 22 different characters. “We offer the stories […]

Vancouver Island artist Philip Mix says that as a kid, all he wanted to do was drawn. Now 70 years old, Mix says at some point along the way, he figured it was more than likely a coping mechanism for him. Mix is one of numerous artists who contributed work to Recognition and Recollection, an […]

To mark Alzheimer’s awareness month, Heather Cooke, Manager of Research and Knowledge Mobilization at the Alzheimer’s Soceity of B.C. spoke with the program about recent developments in Alzheimer’s treatment. “We still see this prevalence of stigma, and that can be stigma from others, but it can also be self-stigma,” she said. “We know that silence […]

Melanie Doucet, Executive Director of the National Council of Youth in Care Advocates, says there can be a hard cut off for people raised in the foster system when they reach adulthood. “ Parents don’t just go, ‘hey, you’re 18 or 19 now, so I’ve done my job and here’s a garbage bag of your belongings […]

Treena Orchard says an approach to intimacy and human connection called relationship anarchy is becoming especially popular among millennials and Generation Z. The associate professor at Western University’s school of health studies spoke with People First Radio about the subject, which she had previously covered in The Conversation. “Relationship anarchy is an approach to relating […]

A planned supportive housing site in Victoria will offer 20 spaces to men in recovery. Located at 1153 Johnson St. It’s the result of a partnership between BC Housing, the City of Victoria, and The Victoria Cool Aid Society. Angela Moran, Director of Housing and Shelters with the Victoria Cool Aid Society, spoke with People […]

A planned supportive housing development in Nanaimo aims to offer spaces for people looking to minimize exposure to substance use. Called Sparrow, it is set to go in the former Travellers Lodge on Nelson Street. Funded by the provincial HEARTH program, the building is being leased by BC Housing, and will operated by Pacifica Housing. […]

A family story of Finding Home in Nanaimo has inspired a new children’s book. Liubov Nazarenko says she and her family moved to Nanaimo from Ukraine three years ago because of the war. According to Nazarenko, one day, her daughter was missing home, and a story Nazarenko’s mom Valentyna Miliohlova told her granddaughter to help […]

On the second Saturday of every month, a group of volunteers in Victoria head out in public to offer what co-founder Bernice Rahm calls “gimmick free listening.” Rahm spoke with People First Radio about the project, called Sidewalk Talk. “We’ve had people tell us about how their partner is in the hospital and they’re not […]

The Mayor of Calwood calls a model used to bring family doctors to the community a “no-brainer”. Doug Kobayashi says that a few years ago, the small city near Victoria had zero family doctors.To try and address the problem, they looked at a model where Colwood would run its own clinic. Doctors would work as […]

Ottawa Pediatrician Dr. Shawn Kelly is calling for more focus on addressing youth opioid use. Kelly spoke with People First Radio to expand on the issues he raised in a recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, co-authored by Shannon Charlebois. “ I belong to a loose network of other people who do similar work. […]

Adam McInnis is a nurse practitioner who lives in London, Ont., and specializes in addictions medicine. He also has first hand experience of addiction, and is eight years sober. In addition to his own clinical work, Mcinnis works as a nurse adviser with a provincial initiative in Ontario designed to improve care for people experiencing […]

Charlotte Lee, a research fellow and chartered psychologist at The University of Bristol, says that weight gain following diagnosis of certain mental illnesses is predictable, but healthcare systems aren’t doing enough to support people through the experience. Lee was the lead author on a study that looked at the health records of over 100,000 people […]

Patty Douglas is an associate professor of disability studies at Queen’s University and author of Unmothering Autism. She also describes herself as “a mom of two neurodivergent sons, one of whom attracted the label of autism.” “Autism is a made up category just as much as it is a very real lived experience,” she said. […]

Around ten years ago, Julia Gruson-Wood put out a research call and spoke with a number of people about applied behavior analysis (ABA), which is the basis of a common intervention used with autistic children, despite drawing criticism from autistic self advocates. Gruson-Wood says many of the conversations were cagey at first, with people trying […]

A new documentary is sharing people’s experiences of self injury, as well as the stories of their recovery. Self Injury: Stories of Recovery and Hope emerged as part of a research project of Stephen Lewis, a professor in the psychology department at the University of Guelph. “We used a research approach called participatory video. And […]

Opioid agonist treatment (OAT) is a treatment for opioid use disorder. It involves the use of medications such as methadone, buprenorphine, and slow release oral morphine. People First Radio spoke with Nanaimo addictions medicine specialist Dr. Jess Wilder, and BC Centre for Substance Use Co-Medical Director Dr. Paxton Bach about the treatment, which Bach called […]

Stephen Monteiro, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, says that conversations around smartphone use tend to focus on content, rather than on the place the devices themselves have come to hold in our lives. “Social media is a big one. Gaming is another big one. More and more the use of AI is […]

 No Fixed Address: The White Cart Memorial is a documentary filmed in Kelowna exploring grief and homelessness. Co-producers and directors Joshua Black and Stephanie Laing spoke with People First Radio. Its title refers to a memorial designed by unhoused community members in Kelowna. A shopping cart was painted white and people added tags and other […]

Renata Roma says people are becoming increasingly aware of the mental health of their pets. “ The emotional place of animals in people’s lives is very different to if we compare to how animals were perceived years ago,” she said. The researcher at the PAWsitive Connections lab with the University of Saskatchewan pointed to recent survey […]

From the works of deaf architect Adolf Loos to the psychiatric record of U.S. civil war veteran, Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy and Jenifer Barclay have been coordinating a team of authors exploring a wide range of topics in disability history. The pair are editors of Cripping The Archive, Disability, History, and Power. The spoke with People First […]

Downtown Eastside service provider First United released a law reform platform earlier this fall, calling for changes to the Residential Tenancy Act in B.C. Staff lawyer Vinson Shih spoke with People First Radio about the platform, which called for an end to pet bans in rentals, and the right for tenants to install cooling devices […]

When Shannon Donohoe-Simpson was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer in her thirties, she says it was a surprise. “ I was that person that was very healthy,” she said. “I was really into personal training and I thought I ate really healthy. So when I was diagnosed with cancer, I know not just […]

In her debut novel, Meg Todd explores difficult subject matter, covering themes like fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, inter-generational abuse, and sexual assault. Most Grievous Fault explores the story of Crystal, who is in her late 20s and mother of Becky, 14. The two live together in a small apartment in the city. Todd says she’s […]

Dr Shannon Charlebois is fed up with the prevalence of gambling advertising in professional sports broadcasts. “The situation is ticking me off. It’s ticking off lots of Canadians,” she said. Charlebois is medical editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She co-authored an editorial about gambling advertising and risks to youth. She referred to a […]

University of Guelph PhD candidate Olivia Peters has been studying Canadian women’s experiences of intimate partner stalking. Peters spoke with People First Radio to share insights from her research, which involved in depth interviews with 20 women who identified as having experienced stalking. Peters said some women had to feign fear to be taken seriously. […]

Speaking August 31 at an event in Parksville marking International Overdose Awareness Day, Greg Hemminger shared his story of opioid addiction and recovery. In the mid 2000s, Hemminger was working as a filmmaker. He says his first feature premiered at the New York International Film Festival when he was 22 years old. “Directing my second […]

Data from almost 40,000 youth in B.C. was used to create From Loot Boxes to Lottery Tickets, a report from the McCreary Centre Society exploring youth gaming and gambling in B.C. The report found 34% of youth surveyed had taken part in at least one of eight gambling or gaming activities for money. McCreary Centre […]

Sleep Country Canada and Listen Up Canada co-founder Gordon Lownds spoke with People First Radio about his experiences with cocaine addiction, which he’s documented in a new memoir called Cracking Up. According to his memoir, while he was in the work associated with the startup phase of Sleep Country, Lownds ended up in a relationship […]

Nicole Letourneau says that when things get difficult, instead of wishing she had a drink, she now thinks “ thank god I’m not drinking right now.” The lawyer who works with the Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario spoke with People First Radio about her experience recovering from alcohol addiction. Letourneau says she had been […]

Francis Baptiste is using music to share his experiences with addiction. “ I think addiction is something that thrives in secrecy and in stigma,” he said. “If you don’t talk about it, and if you don’t open up about it, then we all end up just kind of suffering in silence.” The Vancouver musician is getting […]

Trevor Botkin is drawing from his experiences in recovery to bring peer support to the world of construction. Botkin works with the Construction Foundation of British Columbia (CFBC) is involved in a project called The Forge, which is in the midst of transforming an old biker clubhouse in Langford into a support space for people […]

Cindy Blancher is a lawyer with the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee in Ontario, and before entering that career path, she was a registered nurse in a psychiatric hospital. She’s also an advocate around issues related to mental illness, although it’s a term she isn’t a fan of. “ I have a relative who […]

Mary Vaccaro is a faculty member in the school of social work at McMaster University in Hamilton. She’s also been working in the women’s shelter system since 2012. She spoke with People First Radio about her observations from those years of work. “ I think we need to know that many of the women that we […]

More than seven thousand times last year, people were released from Ontario jails with no recorded fixed address. It's also estimated that 80 per cent of people in Ontario's provincial jails are there on remand. Those are some of the details from a report from the John Howard Society of Ontario, called From Incarceration to […]

Michael Sellick lives in Nova Scotia and teaches crochet on YouTube to an audience of 1.3 million subscribers. It’s a hobby he says he first discovered when he was going through a difficult period in his youth. “Two weeks into  high school, I had no friends at all,” he said. “And I was unable to […]

University instructors Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby are the authors of Psychedelic Capitalism, a book that takes a critical look at the direction of the mainstreaming of psychedelic drugs, particularly within the medical system. “We began this work, I would say, with a sense of naive optimism, even enthusiasm that this psychedelic renaissance, this process […]

Cole Kennedy, a Phd student in neuropsychology at the University of Victoria, led newly published research aimed at improving healthcare for people with brain injuries experiencing homelessness and mental health and substance use issues. “We know that every brain injury is different, so the cookie cutter approach doesn’t work in terms of treatment as well […]

As a journalist and documentary maker, Luke Galati says he’s learned that good storytelling has a through line. “ It has something that takes you from the beginning, the middle to the end,” he said. In the two documentaries Galati has made about mental health, he says he’s been that through line. “Using myself as the […]

CRCL stands for “crisis response community led.” It's a model for a team that brings lived experience and minimizes police involvement in mental health related crisis situations. CRCL used to be called Peer Assisted Care Team or PACT. It’s funded by the Province of British Columbia, developed, and administered by the Canadian Mental Health Association, […]

Janel Van Dongen is the founder of 100 Kids For Change Oceanside. It’s a group that brings youth together to support local charities. Inspired by similar groups in the area for men and women, 100 Kids members meet every three months. Each member brings a $10 donation, and a charity to nominate. At each meeting […]

About a year ago, Joanna Pozzulo of Carleton University started the Reading For Well-Being Community Bookclub. “ I wanted to use my background in psychology and research to really highlight for people books that I think might be useful, or at least interesting to read,” she said. “ It’s more around well being rather than trying to […]

Laura Eramian of Dalhousie University was the lead author on a study looking at the experiences of 21 Atlantic Canadians who identified as having no or very few friends. “There really was no single profile of a person who identified as having fewer no friends. We had participants ranging from their late teens up to […]

Rob Wipond, author of Your Consent is Not Required, visited Nanaimo for an author talk on his book, which takes a critical look at involuntary psychiatric treatment. Wipond says that in the late 90s, after voluntarily seeking treatment, his father was committed for a period of several months, which included experiences of forced electrocunvulsive therapy. “ This […]