Flag raised at Burlington City Hall to honour drug overdose victims

People raised a flag at Burlington City Hall to honour the thousands of people who die every year in Canada from drug overdoses.

The ceremony was organized by a local family to recognize international overdose awareness day, and try to keep other people from the heartbreak of a loved one’s overdose death.

Sonja Marcolini and her niece Carly Helmers organized this event in the hope they can help others with the story of their family’s tragedy.

“It’s a shock every morning I wake up and my world doesn’t have him in it,” said Marcolini.

Sonja’s son Brett McDermott was 29, well-liked and fun-loving, and becoming an electrician.

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“Any time we played anything together we always wanted to be on Brett’s team or anything like this because he was always the best person at it. He was like the cool kid in the group,” said Helmers.

Brett died of an overdose last year. His mother says he hadn’t used drugs for years, but wound up with fentanyl by chance one night leading to his overdose.

Brett was part of an overdose epidemic. Health Canada reports 7,328 deaths from overdoses across the country last year, an average of 20 a day.

Sonja and Carly call themselves members of the turtle club, a nickname for Brett when he was young, with a purple chair symbolizing a loved one lost to addiction.

“The reason we want to do it is to get rid of the stigma of addiction,” said Marcolini

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They say the key is to talk openly about addiction.

“We don’t want anyone else to go through this and even if one person turns to somebody and says ‘I need some help,’ that will happen, and they’ll get help, but its a very lonely disease because people hide it,” said Marcolini.

The medical experts agree that the discussion has to start.

“It’s so important that we have the conversation to be able to help to think of strategies to help reduce further deaths, prevent further deaths,” said Ontario Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer.

The scourge of addiction overdoses has been growing. In Halton region alone, where Brett McDermott lived, police say there’ve been 270 known or suspected overdoses so far this year, leading to 28 deaths. In Hamilton the city says there have been 114 suspected drug related deaths up to the end of July.