International Overdose Awareness Day recognized during march through Downtown Nanaimo

Livingston says the current overdose prevention site at 250 Albert Street is not open enough for the community. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm

Concerned citizens took to the streets on August 29 to bring awareness to unregulated drug deaths in Nanaimo.

It has been nine years since the provincial government declared a public health emergency due to the significant rise in unregulated drug deaths throughout the province.

As of the end of June 2025, there have been 566 unregulated drug deaths in the city of Nanaimo since the public health crisis was declared in April 2016.

Ahead of the International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31st, a large group of sombre people marched through the downtown. Other related events took place throughout the province.

The group matched quietly as many carried photos of loved ones who have passed and a faux coffin.

The march was a day of mourning for parents like Sue Fichtler, who lost her 37-year-old son, Evan, in 2022.

“Evan was an amazing human being. He struggled with addiction for probably 10 years. In the last year of his life, he detoxed at our house, which was absolutely brutal if you've ever been with somebody who's done that, but it's superhuman strength,” Fichtler said. “[He] immediately started to become a support worker, got his peer support worker certificate and then his support worker certificate. At that time, we actually had a shelter in Parksville, and he started working at the shelter, so he did what he was supposed to do for the last year of his life.”

Fichtler said, if Evan had access to safe supply that night, he might not have died alone, locked in a bedroom.

“He was supposed to come to our house the next day, and we could have carried on from there,” she said. “I wouldn't be here today if there had been some safe supply; I would have taken him to get it.”

Anne Livingston, one of the organizers of the march, said International Overdose Awareness Day is a difficult day when faced with how much death there has been.

“It's very difficult for people who have lost 1000’s of people and continue to know that they might be next to come to an event like this, because they're worried that if they involve themselves in grief, they'll never stop crying,” Livingston said. “It's a very frightening place to be. I think most of us don't understand that if we have a bad day and cry a bit, we can at least go home and kind of put our feet up or something. If you're homeless, you don't want to risk any kind of upset.”

Livingston said organizations such as Doctors for Safer Drug Policy have been regularly operating pop-up overdose prevention sites near the hospital and downtown. She said this is because the current overdose prevention site at 250 Albert Street is not open enough for the community.

“We feel guilty for not being out every day because this overdose prevention site, although it's extremely well funded, is only open till nine o'clock [at night], which means last calls at 8:30 p.m. and particularly on welfare week, people continue to use drugs into the evening, as most people do,” she said.

The OPS currently runs from 11:15 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week. 

MLA for Nanaimo-Gabriola Island and Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, Sheila Malcolmson, was also in attendance at the march.

She said she sees the importance of the OPS that sits across the street from her office. She said, there is work being done on the OPS to turn it into a wellness centre like the Cowichan Wellness and Recovery Centre located in Duncan.

The centre would offer people access to a primary care nurse, a federally funded addiction medicine nurse who could provide replacement therapy or a prescribed safe supply, as well as entry points into bed-based addiction treatment.

“That's what we're working to build right here. It's overdue. It's taken longer than we wanted,” Malcolmson said. “That's our focus, and we recognize what a step up that will be to attach more obviously and more physically, the services that are already next door, beyond just supervised consumption.”

When asked about extending the current hours of the OPS, Malcomson said she would love to see the hours increased, but the biggest constraint right now is not having enough trained healthcare professionals.

She said right there are programs in place through the provincial government for people wanting to become mental health and addiction workers. Through the Health Career Access Program, the province will pay for the post-secondary program fees and provide a weekly living allowance.

In Nanaimo, Vancouver Island University, Sprott Shaw College and Discovery Community College all offer programs in mental health and addiction.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.