Walk With Me research project fights toxic drug crisis stigma

Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley Art Gallery staff noticed the increase in drug-related incidents in their community, especially with youth, artists, and people living just outside the gallery.

From this, the gallery created Walk With Me, with its harm-reduction partners at AVI Health and Community Services, Island Health, people with lived experience, and researchers at Thompson Rivers University.

Walk With Me is an arts-based research project created to reduce the stigma of the toxic drug crisis in B.C. and to create social change. The initiative holds story walks where people listen to a recording of someone sharing their experience with toxic drugs. Groups wear headphones and the recordings are anonymous.

“I see people are a lot more comfortable and a lot more compassionate towards people affected by certain things,” says Jojo Jaeger, a gallery assistant at the Comox Valley Art Gallery.

Last year, more than 1,800 people died from illicit drug overdoses in B.C. Since the province declared a public health emergency over the overdose crisis in April 2016, more than 18,000 people have died.

While deaths have decreased since a peak in 2023 — with 2,593 deaths — B.C. has averaged 3.5 deaths per day in 2026, as of May. From January to May, 630 people died of toxic drugs in the province.

Toxic drug overdoses are the leading cause of death in B.C. for those aged 10 to 59, exceeding the combined deaths of homicides, suicides, accidents, and diseases. 

The Walk With Me project has grown to include organizations across the province, including Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The project has reached 300 communities on just Vancouver Island.

Criminology instructor Tara Lyons leads the Walk With Me initiative at KPU. Lyons works with the Surrey Union of Drug Users, a group that provides support, resources, and education to people using drugs, to address the lack of research on Surrey’s toxic drug supply crisis.

KPU criminology honours graduate Jasmeen Kaur got involved with the project as a student consultant, later becoming a research assistant.

“Although I don’t have personal lived experience with the drug crisis, [I got involved as a consultant] to make students more comfortable that there’s a fellow student who was there to support them,” Kaur says.

As a research assistant, Kaur listens to the stories of KPU students, conducts interviews, and will compile a report from the personal experiences people have shared, adding that the team will begin analyzing the information collected in September. 

She adds that so far, 115 student voices have been documented, which are used to create the story walk recordings.

“Some of them have lived experience…. Sometimes people have family members or friends who’ve gone through this crisis,” Kaur says. “It’s not mandatory for people to have lived experience. It’s just whatever they feel comfortable sharing.”

The Comox Valley Art Gallery collaborates on the story walks at KPU, including providing resources like headphones.

“The end goal would be to create a report for KPU, and then through that report, they’d be able to take recommendations from the students with lived experience, and how they can better support them,” Kaur says.

The story walks are about an hour long, and she says they include different topics like harm reduction, education, community training, and strategic and staff development.

“[It’s] an interesting way to put together new research and also share the lived experiences of people,” Kaur says.

She adds that the walking group does a check-in during the middle of the recording, and has a discussion at the end about what resonated with them and what they learned. 

KPU President Pro Tem Diane Purvey and Surrey City Centre MLA Amna Shah, who is also the parliamentary secretary for mental health and addictions, have joined the KPU community for a story walk.

At the walk in October 2025, Shah spoke about the need for research on the impact of the toxic drug crisis on university students.

The story walk Jaeger participated in began with a meal at the Comox Valley Art Gallery, while attendees introduced themselves.

“It’s like the experience of sitting down and asking somebody about their life story without having to do that, instead you walk through nature and you listen to somebody’s story, so that you can understand where they’re coming from,” Jaeger says.

Jaeger adds that the Walk With Me project’s goal is to grow compassion and understanding towards people that are or have used drugs.

“The most important aspect of the project is to reduce the stigma around the drug crisis, and rather than just being witness to what’s happening at post-secondary institutions and outside in the real world, what can we do to spark conversation?” Kaur says.

She adds that the project is expanding to KPU’s different campuses.

“We’re also going to do [the story walks] at the [Cloverdale] campus because it’s a tech-heavy campus, and we just found out that people working in trades are highly likely to be suffering from this crisis,” Kaur says.

The BC Coroner’s Service reported that workers in trades, transport, and equipment operation accounted for 21 per cent of deaths on average between 2022 and 2024.

“I wanted to get involved personally because it’s a big issue in our South Asian community,” Kaur says. “Nobody wants to talk about it, and people are just not ready to discuss that this is a problem.” 

From 2015 to 2018, unregulated drug deaths among South Asian people increased 255 per cent in Fraser Health, compared to a 138 per cent increase among other residents in the region.

Community programming, like Roshni Clinic, offers dedicated support for South Asians facing alcohol and substance abuse in Punjabi and Hindi.

“A lot of people feel lighter [after sharing] because they’ve gotten it off their chest, and they feel that there’s somebody who is ready to listen to them,” Kaur says. “Even if it doesn’t solve their problem because it’s a major issue … they do feel lighter after sharing.”