Well, actually they left a few weeks ago, from Sydney, but they got a new member now.

The History

In June of 2004 our daughter Charlotte met a group of Aboriginal youth at a Pow-Wow here in Ottawa who had just finished walking from BC to Ottawa to help raise national awareness about the very high rates of Aboriginal suicide in Canada. They impressed her a lot and over the winter many discussions took place, in the spring of 2005 she flew to Vancouver, took a boat to Duncan BC, where she joined the 2005 Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Walk and spent the spring/summer walking back to Ottawa. Along the way they stopped and talked at schools, town halls, community centres, detention centres, band councils…. basically anywhere people would listen to them - and they raised a whole bunch of awareness.

Here & Now

This year the walk started in Sydney NS and they’re walking to Vancouver on the same mission, the organizers asked Charlotte if she was interested in doing the walk this year but she was unsure - one night they called her from Montreal and asked if she might want to do the Montreal - Ottawa portion with them, she went, she walked, she announced yesterday that it “felt good to walk” and that she’s headed for the west coast.

Today

Today was the “official Ottawa walk in”, the walkers and local supporters from the Assembly of First Nations and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami walked from the AFN offices to Parliament hill where everybody was met and greeted by a few low level feds (tells you how interested they are in this issue ‘eh?), a couple of MPs (no CPoC folks that I saw), and the media.

You Can Help

As with last year we’ll keep y’all updated on how things are going, and please folks, head on over to the Youth Suicide Prevention Walk site and show them your support.