THUNDER BAY — The Empower2Recover Foundation hosted Thunder Bay’s Battle for Recovery 2 at the Superior Inn and Conference Centre on Saturday.
The event featured various booths run by local organizations and a lineup of roughly 10 speakers sharing their personal journeys and expertise with the community.
It aimed to bring people together, break the stigma and celebrate recovery, resilience and hope for those living with trauma, mental health and addiction.
“Without community, you can’t do these things and we’re in a time and age where we need to be doing events like this,” said Jay Barnard, the Empower2Recover Foundation’s executive director.
“We need to be bringing people together. We need to be sharing about these stories and we need to be talking about the tough subjects. We need to be talking about the truth and we need to be talking about trauma, mental health, addiction and recovery and we need to be showing hope.”
With that goal in mind, Barnard said they would “blow the roof off” at the Superior Inn and Conference Centre from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Thunder Bay’s Battle for Recovery 2 is the 17th live event held during the foundation’s two years of being a not-for-profit and also Empower2Recover’s kickoff for the Northwestern Ontario’s Battle for Recovery as one of four cities it will stop in this year in the region.
Barnard said doing the event is “massively exciting.”
“After today, we’ll have 203 different speakers (who) have spoke on the platform in five provinces in 15 cities, two Indigenous communities and two online events,” Barnard said.
“So, for a guy that’s coming up on 18 years into recovery and just always wanted to live his dreams and goals and aspirations like I’m living out another dream, you know what I mean, with all of Canada. And today I get to live it out with Thunder Bay.”
Some of these speakers included San Santorelli, who was seven years into recovery, and Brittany Caul, who was at the event last year and had been in recovery for 339 days.
Phenomenally, she is actually speaking at the event, he said, so it’s “massively awesome.”
There was also a keynote speaker, Raynell Casey, who, he said, is doing some phenomenal work in the community, has her own podcast and was also at the event last year.
“This year, actually, four people from last year’s event (are) speaking at this event, so that just shows me how awesome bringing the empowerment and bringing the people together and the love, kindness and compassion (is),” Barnard said.
Not everybody’s recovery is the same, he explained. A lot of people look at addiction and alcoholism and they think it’s that, but it runs deeper than that, Barnard continued.
“So, we are really focused on the trauma, mental health, addiction and recovery standpoint of things. We love bringing people together because it’s community connection and collaboration,” Barnard said.
In addition, he said, it is just “so awesome” to see a new platform revolutionizing recovery and the Superior Inn and Conference Centre has also been amazing in providing them with the space, as well as a light breakfast and lunch.
“A huge shout out to all of the major partners that (have) made this happen,” Barnard said.
This year, he said, they were able to give 70 free tickets at four community booths, thanks to the generosity of the Thunder Bay community through all of the amazing people who got behind them and made the event happen this year.
The support was “phenomenal,” Barnard said.
“I couldn’t be more proud as the executive director and all the love that the community has shown us for today’s event,” Barnard said.
