Grey-Bruce Kids Winter 2021/22

on, interviewing Kincardine native Kendra Fisher – a former
teammate of mine on our high school hockey team – about the
mental health issues that cost her a shot at playing goal for Team
Canada and a good chunk of her 20s.
Ten years ago, mental health was still a rather taboo subject, and
we were one of the first publications to tell Kendra’s story. She
has since become well known provincially and nationally for her
Mentally Fit program and impactful speaking engagements.
In 2013, Dwight spoke to Walkerton’s Yolanda Cameron about
the suicide of her son Wes, which could have torn her and
husband James to pieces but instead led to them launching
Wes for Youth Online, which in 2020 helped over 830 youth
through times of crisis, undoubtedly saving lives. Even today,
the story’s lede still brings tears to my eyes.
“For two years, pain has been a constant companion of Yolanda
Cameron. It drains from her eyes and undercoats each laugh,
sometimes in the same breath. Always, it threatens to best her, to keep
her all to itself, shutting out the world. Yet she refuses to give in. She
can’t bear the thought of another family experiencing her ultimate
pain, the unexplainable loss of a child.”
And, on Yolanda’s advice from eight years ago, we still do not
let our kids keep their phones or iPads in their rooms at night,
allowing them to be unavailable for essentially the first time all
day, get a good night’s sleep and recharge their batteries. She told
us she wished she had known to do the same for Wes.
Jace Irwin, 18 months
at the time, helps Mom
with her first Summer
issue in June 2012.
We’ve tackled racism, and separate series on the local LGBTQ+
community, Ontario’s youth justice system, and how to keep
kids safe online. We talked to the family of Ava Morgan,
who, as an eight-year-old, chose to live life as her true self –
a transgendered girl in a small town. We attended the first
birthday party of the Coutts quadruplets in Tiverton. I joined
a group of locals in Nicaragua and wrote about the people
who live in, and scavenge for food from, a local dump. We
(hopefully) educated local parents on the dangers of vaping,
the local opioid crisis, marijuana as it was moving from illegal
substance to sold in downtowns across the region, ‘sexting,’
education, human trafficking, being money-wise at a young age,
and so very much more in what has felt like a very short decade.
Some of this we’ve written ourselves, while we’ve leveraged the