International Overdose Awareness Day marked in solemn ceremony in Ottawa

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Ty Petersen stood before a crowd gathered for International Overdose Awareness Day on Friday and spoke about his own sobriety, his struggles to save himself and — his voice cracking with emotion — the struggles of a cousin he couldn’t save.

“I helped him start his journey into recovery,” Petersen said as a light rain misted over the crowd at the Canadian Monument to Human Rights on Elgin Street.

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“Then last summer, I got the call. He died alone at a bus stop. He wasn’t at a safe consumption site. And he wasn’t with somebody who was educated and had a naloxone kit.”

The cousin, Jimmy Bermingham, was 51.

“My family is here today as part of our grieving process,” Petersen said. “And to help others.”

The first International Overdose Awareness Day was held in 2001 in Melbourne, Australia, and it has since grown into a world-wide event aimed at ending the stigma surrounding substance use, showing that overdose deaths are preventable and acknowledging the grief of the family and friends of those lost to overdose.

This year’s event came just a week after the provincial government announced it was closing 10 of Ontario’s 17 supervised consumption sites, including one on Somerset Street West. And, while that decision sparked plenty of anger at Friday’s rally, the stories of sorrow and loss left many in tears.

Jimmy Bermingham stood six foot six, “a big loving teddy bear” who could skate and score well enough that he was drafted by the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings.

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But Bermingham never made the big league, toiling instead for more than a decade as a minor pro for teams like the Huntington Blizzard, Worcester IceCats and Lowell Lock Monsters. He was a league all star and won championships both as a player and a coach. Three years ago, he was inducted into the East Coast Hockey League Hall of Fame as the fifth-leading scorer in league history.

Life after hockey, however, wasn’t so easy. Laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bermingham was living in his father’s basement with a steady supply of CERB money to feed his addictions.

“He always had a problem because I used to drink with him,” said Petersen, who is 18 years younger than his cousin. “But he’s a grown man. You can’t force someone to get sober. They have to want it.

“Then he called me one day and said, ‘I’m going to rehab.’

“I said, ‘Perfect.’

“He said, ‘Find me one.’”

Bermingham came to Ottawa to live with Petersen, who found him a spot at a treatment centre in Merrickville.

There was no doubt why Bermingham turned to his cousin for help. Petersen had made a similar plea himself when he was working as a plumber, living in his truck in Ottawa, abusing drugs and alcohol and lying to his parents and everyone else. One night Petersen found himself on the street outside Les Suites Hotel, thinking of suicide.

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“I called my brother,” he recalled. “He picked me up at 3 a.m. and brought me to his place. He called my parents to come over and they said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘I need help.’ I told them, ‘I don’t want to live like this anymore.’”

Two days later — Christmas Day — Petersen was on a plane with an addiction counsellor on his way to a treatment centre in North Carolina. He was there for three months, participating in an outdoor program where he hiked 15 kilometres a day with a 25-kilogram pack on his back.

“They taught me to love myself,” he said.

Back in Ottawa, Petersen began attending Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, more than 90 of them in his first 90 days in the national capital, sometimes going to five meetings in a single day. He met his wife in treatment. Together they’ve celebrated six years of marriage and seven years of sobriety.

Jimmy Bermingham’s life had no such happy ending. He was sober for a while, but spent his final days homeless in Niagara Falls and St. Catharines. His Facebook posts provide a harrowing account of illness, desperation and life on the street.

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For Petersen, who said he felt his cousin’s presence with him on Friday, sharing stories is an important way of putting a human face on addiction.

“We have to continue to educate,” he said. “We have to end the stigma. People need to know that just because someone’s a drug addict doesn’t mean they’re not a human being.

“We have to continue to have safe injection sites. We need more naloxone kits. I believe they should be in every workplace. They should be in every restaurant. They should be everywhere. Maybe my cousin would still be alive if naloxone kits were everywhere. He wouldn’t have died at a bus stop. And my family wouldn’t have to grieve. Even if he was using at a safe injection site, we could still talk to him. He’d still be alive.”

Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, was among the speakers at Friday’s sombre ceremony.

“The shame and the stigma that’s associated with substance use mean that, when people lose a loved one, they are really isolated in their grief,”  Etches said. “That’s why it’s so important to have events like today to support each other.”

While substance use is a complex problem that must be tackled in many ways, such as with more affordable housing and mental health supports, supervised injection sites play a vital role, Etches said.

“We need places where people can be engaged, right where they are, when they’re using substances,” Etches said.

“Places like consumption and treatment services, where there are compassionate workers who can start to make things better, that’s a really important step on the path to treatment. You’re not going to get someone into treatment without those kinds of engagement opportunities.”

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