Every year, June 25 is a tough day for Mission resident Hellena Fehr.
It would have been her son Corbin Fehr’s 28th birthday. He died of toxic drugs in April 2022 at a recovery house in Surrey.
Last year, Hellena organized a “Feed the People” barbecue outside the Diamond Head Motor Inn in Mission to remember Corbin on his birthday. She brought the event back to the same location this year with a pizza buffet.
“It's a hard day, but it was a good day,” Fehr said.
Not as many people attended the event as last year, but it went smoothly due to the group of volunteers helping out.
Photos of dozens of toxic drug victims from Mission were on display at the event, with more than double the number of faces compared to last year’s gathering.
Mission Youth House, the Mission Association for Community Living and Mission Overdose Community Action Team all attended the event and provided support. The 14th Avenue Pub also played host to a public fundraiser for the event in May.
Fehr has taken up advocacy since her son's death.
In September 2022, Fehr spoke as a delegation to Mission council to ask the city for more supervision of recovery homes.
Council voiced their support following the delegation and Mission Mayor Paul Horn said staff were already asked to begin the process of looking at the city’s recovery home bylaws.
At Monday’s (July 2) council meeting, Fehr will appear as a delegation to follow up with the city.
“I'm tired of the runaround,” Fehr said.
Fehr says recovery home deaths keep happening and she has several names of people who died in recovery since council promised to look into it.
“To my knowledge, there hasn't been any more [deaths] in Mission but these are still situations that should not have happened and Mission has an opportunity to be the first to fix this part of the problem,” Fehr said.
After Corbin’s death, Fehr says there was a lot of company at first. But after the funeral, it went away and he was left staring at photos.
Moving forward, Fehr hopes to be there for others who experience similar loss. She says there isn’t a lot of support in Mission for people who have lost a loved one to the toxic drug crisis.
“If a person is lost to drugs, the people that are left behind are so often treated with the same stigma that the drug users are treated with,” Fehr says.
Fehr is helping to form Mission’s first peer-led support group for people who have lost someone to drug-related harm. Its first gathering will take place in July.
