If I learned anything from last week’s assignments, it’s that Lloydminster is making waves when it comes to mental health and domestic violence.
Read more: Column: Look out for your neighbour
After a moving conversation about mental health at the Lloyd Ex with Ian Hill, which I wrote about last week, I had the privilege of attending a SPARK Foundation luncheon.
The event was the foundation’s way of wrapping up Family Violence Awareness Month and included a presentation on domestic violence.
As stated by SPARK Foundation chief program officer Kathryn Ford, the numbers were eye-opening.
According to Statistics Canada, a woman is killed by her intimate partner every four days in Canada. Women make up 73 per cent of all intimate-partner homicide victims. Women are four times more likely to experience intimate-partner violence than men, and 61 per cent of Indigenous women have experienced some form of intimate-partner violence.
These stats, which reflect reported domestic violence between 2021 and 2023, have been rising over the past decade. Scary, right?
Aside from taking a few notes on my phone, I was glued to what speaker Denova Gibson had to say. My biggest takeaway from the hour spent in the Servus Centre’s OTS room was that we, as men, need to do better.
Kathryn said it well during a post-presentation conversation we shared: “Real change can only happen when the community comes together — when the men, all the good guys, come together and say, ‘This is wrong.’”
There may be some bad apples in the basket, but having been here for over a decade, I can say Lloydminster is filled with the good guys. Denova even noted the number of men in attendance last Thursday, as she’s used to speaking to a 100 per cent female audience.
Similar to the mental-health initiative, the people of Lloydminster are taking important steps to end domestic and family violence — and it all starts with a conversation.
It can be a tough subject to address, but if you think someone is struggling with mental health or family violence, start that conversation. It could do more than you realize.
Read more: Word on the beat: CDSA
