On Easter weekend 2005, Norma Kejick and her husband hosted an impromptu family gathering in Sioux Lookout, Ont., that included her 22-year-old son, Clinton, and his cousin Eric. The next day, while out on their snowmobile, the couple was stopped by a friend who brought news that would change Kejick's life: "Eric is gone." After leaving his aunt and uncle's house, Eric Kejick - the MVP on his volleyball team, and a talented guitar player and songwriter - had gone home and hanged himself. Youth suicide is rampant in Kejick's First Nations community in northern Ontario, with more than two dozen deaths annually, double the national average. On that terrible Easter Sunday two years ago, Norma Kejick made it her mission to bring that number to zero. Kejick, a mother of four and grandmother of four, is the principal of the Wahsa Distance Education Centre, the country's only radio-based high school. In the early 1990s, during a dark time that followed her father's death, she attempted suicide for the second time, then tried to resign from her job in shame. "My boss said, 'No, you can help our young people because you've been there.' But I didn't get it then. I just pushed that comment aside. When Eric died, everything flooded back. Clinton was taking his cousin's death very hard. I decided I had to do something before I lost my son too. I didn't want to be another mother planning a funeral." Kejick contacted the Canadian chapter of the Light for Life Foundation, whose Yellow Ribbon program is devoted to preventing teen suicide. By February 2006, she had launched the program in four high schools. Along with a team of trained counsellors, she visits the students to share her story and Eric's, and explains the impact of suicide on family and friends. The teens get a small card they can hand to an adult or peer wearing a yellow ribbon whenever they need to talk. "This card," says Kejick, " is a cry for help." Kejick has since been invited to bring the Yellow Ribbon program to schools in other First Nations communities, and she organizes an annual Walk for Life to raise awareness of youth suicide. Even she couldn't have predicted how dramatic the impact would be. During one of her first school visits, a student left the gymnasium, walked to the vice-principal and handed over the card, confessing that he'd been thinking about suicide for two weeks. Two similar incidents happened over the next few days. "In the first week alone, I witnessed three lives that were saved by the program. That was what I had set out to do, and I've done it." Chosen charities: Northern Nishnawbe Education Council and Kids Help Phone |
