People First Radio & Media

10/31/2026

Psychologist and Simon Fraser University Professor Grace Iarocci has been looking at how people with ADHD may be working extra hard to try and blend in.

“Masking is this concept that was first talked about in relation with autistic people. So in the literature on autism we came to recognize that many individuals, mainly women but also men or non-binary, or transgender individuals who are autistic tend to what we call camouflage or mask behaviours so that they appear more typical,” she said.

“And so we thought, well, if autistic people are struggling with this, masking, having to mask behaviours, maybe other people with developmental disabilities, like people with ADHD, might also be doing some of these same things, or they could be masking in different ways.”

Iarocci says people tend to mask to avoid negative perceptions from others.

“The idea is that camouflaging or masking is kind of a survival mechanism that people with developmental disabilities might use because often in society, and there’s lots of research examples of this, people have certain biases around people with developmental disabilities, thinking that maybe they’re not as smart as everybody else, they’re not as, capable, or they’re not as able to make friendships,” she said.

“I mean, there’s all kinds of sort of biases or impressions that people have about people with these conditions.”

She says the stakes are often quite high for people who are masking.

“They’re doing it so that they don’t get into trouble, or that they don’t lose their jobs, or that they don’t lose friends. And so often there’s a lot on the line, and yeah, if things don’t go right, it can lead to really serious consequences,” she said.

Iarocci says masking can give people a sense that they aren’t showing off their real personality to others.

“The other part about masking too is that if you do too much of that, it starts to feel like you’re putting on a performance, it’s not really you. People don’t get to know the real you, and so you kind of start to feel like, ‘Are people liking me because of the way I’m performing or because of who I am as a person, underneath that persona?'”

Iarocci says it can be exhausting masking all day.

“There could be mental health costs, feeling anxious all the time because you have to be hyper-vigilant, or feeling depressed because you’re having to do all this extra work, and still people are maybe not as impressed by you as you think they should be or that you’re not gaining as much from doing all that work.”

She spoke to some potential serious consequences that could be downstream of masking.

“People who, who may be masking too much or in too many situations, because of the challenges of having to do that, they’re becoming more anxious, often…hyper-vigilant around, situations or people,” she said. “If you’re very anxious, of course, substances sometimes can ease that feeling. So that can have risks for substance use for sure. I’ve seen that in my own clients describing why they started using substances to feel more able to cope in these situations, to feel more relaxed around social situations.”

Iarocci also spoke about the potential for people to reach a state of burnout that is difficult to bounce back from.

Burnout is another really a common thing that I’ve heard from my adult clients where, if you keep doing this, it wears you down over time. Like, you keep having to over prepare, having to be hyper-vigilant, having to always check yourself, everything you say, everything you do. And maybe again not getting the positive feedback from people at work or in post-secondary settings where you feel like all your effort is actually paying off. In fact, no, you keep finding yourself In situations where people are calling you out on things, or you’re not getting it quite right.

And so that can easily lead to burnout. And once there is burnout, it really is hard to come back from. It’s almost like you’ve reached a point where you just have this incredibly overwhelmed feeling, like you’re never going to be able to come back to that setting. It’s almost like a kinda traumatic event that happens.

And so whether it’s in a workplace or a post-secondary setting, or even in a personal relationship setting, if you feel like completely exhausted and burnt out you may never want to go back to that situation. So it’s really hard to come back. That’s why we wanna prevent burnout at all costs.

Iarocci says society can be more understanding of people with ADHD, so that the toll of masking can be lessened.

“People can be more empathetic toward these folks and understand that just because they behave differently, maybe they’re moving around and fidgeting or doing other things that other people don’t do, doesn’t mean that they’re not competent, or doesn’t mean that they’re not great people to be around or to be friends with or to be a partner to,” she said.

“We have to start to become more empathic and understand it from the other person’s perspective, knowing what they’re going through and how they’re having to navigate life. And once we have that information and we are more informed about this, maybe our behaviour, our attitudes will change, and that will make everybody’s life easier, right? Not just the mainstream.”

Listen:

"We have to start to become more empathic and understand it from the other person's perspective, knowing what they're going through and how they're having to navigate life," says SFU prof Grace Iarocci

10/22/2026

Kelly McKowen spent years talking with people who were unemployed in Norway. In his book Down and Out in Utopia, the assistant professor of Anthropology at the College of William And Mary provides a look at what can happen if you lose your job in one of the world’s wealthiest and most egalitarian countries.

McKowen spoke with People First Radio host Joe Pugh about the book. He explains that people seeking unemployment support in Norway rely on the The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service, or Nav for short. The cradle to grave welfare agency also connects Norwegians with a number of other social services.

McKowen has been going to Norway for around 15 years. He explains the thinking behind his look at the issue of unemployment in the country.

“ The first thing that I wanted to look at was what happens when a person loses their job in a comprehensive social democratic welfare system, and second, what are the implications of that for how they think about government and taxes.” He says.

“ What I found was that the system’s remarkably, we’ll say integrative, that it really gets everyone on the same page, or almost everyone on the same page with respect to, the kind of moral significance of both work and minimizing one’s dependency on the welfare system.”

McKowen says that the system entitles people to a great deal of support when times are tough.

“I think a lot of people would assume that that means, like, aren’t people just living on the dole? Aren’t they just availing themselves of all of this support to avoid work?” He asks.

“There’s a little bit of that, but not a lot. Labour market participation rates are comparatively very high.”

“How do we make sense of a system that’s seemingly, and here’s that word again, so generous, and yet it’s not minimizing or destroying the work ethic? The short answer is what I found is that I think generosity and obligation are two sides of the same coin.”

McKowen explains that he found the system engendered a belief in people that they should be working and paying taxes in the middle third of their lives.

“It’s no secret that Norway is at the top of the world when it comes to quality of life. And so I think people, they become acutely aware of the fact that they have a role to play in protecting that.”

He says that people’s expectations around the morally correct way to use the welfare system are created and sustained through everyday interactions.

He says there’s a pervasive stereotype of the “naaver”, derived from the name of the country’s welfare agency. It refers to a hypothetical person who is dependent on the welfare system, and could work but chooses not to.

“These are like the Norwegian version of the welfare queen or something like that. And a lot of folks I talked to told me that they were motivated to find work, yes, to kind of fulfill their personal or professional dreams, but to avoid being perceived of as a naaver. People will think I’m a naaver.”

McKowen asked himself why so many people talked about naavers, and concluded it was a way to express a sort of vision on the ethical use of the welfare system.

“There’s not like a guide out there that’s like the ethical way to use the welfare system. Here’s what to do and what not to do,” he said. “It’s something that people kind of create through everyday discourse with one another.”

But he also says the idea of naaving is a simplistic and problematic understanding of human motivation.

“ It assumes that people are mostly motivated by material incentives, so it assumes that if you work, Joe, it’s because working is more attractive than using the welfare system, and so maybe we have to make the welfare system really unappealing,” he said.

“There’s also this really pernicious way in which the naaving discourse is linked to migrants, and there’s this assumption that certain people are more prone to navving because of their cultural backgrounds or something like that, which I think empirically is complete nonsense.”

“I think we can hold these two thoughts in our head simultaneously, that people express a sense of the kind of ethical way to use the welfare system, and that maybe benefits the welfare system by minimizing direct dependency and encouraging labor market participation, while at the same time, it can be a really problematic way to think about why people do or do not do certain things with respect to the welfare system.”

He suggests the title of his book, Down and Out in Utopia is somewhat tongue in cheek.

"I think the argument of the book is extremely simple. It’s we all acknowledge that we are shaped by our experiences, especially our hardship experiences, and we acknowledge that policy shapes experiences. And so I just make the leap to say policy shapes who we are. It creates the context within which we learn stuff about ourselves and our societies."

"And if we wanna have a serious and sophisticated conversation about the Nordic welfare model, we should embrace the philosophical possibilities that lie within that conversation. What do we want work to mean? What do we want the state to mean to people? What do we want freedom to mean? And so, like I said, I’m not going to assume that I know what people’s answers are to those things. So maybe a utopia to some people, but not to others."

Listen:

Kelly McKowen talks about what it's like to be "Down and Out in Utopia"

10/09/2026

Community came together in Qualicum Beach Wednesday, September 30, to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

The day begin with a gathering at ts’xwelikwshenawtxw, “the house at the foot of Mount Arrowsmith.” As people spoke over coffee, crafting, and knowledge sharing activities, People First Radio producer Joe Pugh spoke with Kim Recalma-Clutesi, Ogwi’low’gwa, of the Qualicum First Nation about the day.

“ I wanna be really clear, reconciliation is not an Indigenous thing. It’s a settler thing. It is something for the outside world, outside of the indigenous communities to do. It’s their job,” she said. “And it’s not about us recounting what was lost. It’s about looking at what society as a whole lost by not having allies with the First Peoples 150 years ago when these colonies were established.”

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was first observed in 2021. It was a response to call to action number 80 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which called on “the federal government, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, to establish, as a statutory holiday, a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour Survivors, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

Recalma-Clutesi spoke about the importance of observing the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in a way that does not carry the expectation that residential school survivors are pressured into sharing stories that could be re-traumatizing.

“I’ve sat with many survivors. I’ve sat with many family members, my late husband, my first husband. And I’m very aware of the pain that it takes to recount those stories, and the rabbit holes people go down when they do that. It’s against our teachings to do that. And so when we’re asked to do that, it puts you in a deficit. It’s not reconciliation when you do that.”

She says there are a number of books that people can read to inform themselves on the issues without actively re-traumatizing people, citing Shingwauk’s Vision by JR Miller, a book she helped peer review, as one example.

“Shingwauk’s Vision is actually a really, really good book. I hope the libraries all have multiple copies, and people read it. And then they get informed without dragging that pain out of people individually.”

From ts’xwelikwshenawtxw, a crowd of over 100 people marched to the fountain in front of Town Hall, where Qualicum First Nation Chief Michael Recalma, Qualicum Beach Mayor Teunis Westbrook, and Kim Recalma-Clutesi gave speeches.

From there, the gathering moved to the Qualicum Beach Museum, where a special exhibit was set up to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Museum Operations Manager Kissel Reid spoke about her approach to the day.

“I wanted the museum to be a space to learn. National Truth and Reconciliation Day is such a brand-new holiday that I think there’s a lot of people out there who still have questions about what it is, what it means, why do we wear orange shirts, and I wanted the museum to be a space where people can come and learn about as much as they could, but also ask questions if they had any questions,” she said.

“ I wanted to make sure that at every exhibit, at every stop throughout the way, that there was a topic of indigenous learning, of truth and reconciliation, or of a history that people sometimes aren’t familiar with.”

Listen:

Community came together in Qualicum Beach Wednesday, September 30, ...

10/08/2026

The Gold Coat Program at the California Men’s Colony State Prison sees long term inmates serve as caregivers for inmates with dementia.

Filmmaker Petra Volpe first learned about the program 12 years ago, which prompted a visit, and led to the development of a feature film inspired by the program, called Frank & Louis, which recently screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Volpe says during the visit, she was struck by the experiences of the inmates she spoke with.

“One of the sentences that really stuck with me is that the work of caring for another person who has Alzheimer’s and dementia really made these men feel like humans again,” she said.

“ I felt was such a powerful sentence because it also meant there was a time in their life where they didn’t feel like humans, and it makes total sense because a prison can be an extremely dehumanizing space, a space of violence and a space of compassionless-ness.”

Volpe says it was clear from the beginning that the story of the film would focus on a man taking care of another man.

“And then, it was about really trying to honor the truth and trying to really depict what I had heard in a most truthful and emotional way, to let people into this world, and show people outside that this kind of work is possible in a prison, that people are capable of transformation.”

Volpe says the experience of making the film reinforced the importance of having a purpose in life.

“Purpose is very much connected to caring, and I think it’s important to kind of reconnect to this very simple fact,” she said.

“For me, it was just so reaffirming that even in a place of such violence and toxic masculinity, you can find such extreme tenderness.. seeing men who had done unimaginably bad things like killing somebody, being able to be so caring just showed me…how transformable our human spirit is, and that the worst thing a person does in their life doesn’t have to define them for the rest of their life.”

“A person is much more than the worst thing she did or he did.”

Listen:

The Gold Coat Program at the California Men’s Colony State Prison s...

09/26/2026

Justin Ducharme says his debut feature film Seventeen was inspired by his own experiences living in Vancouver.

“ Something that I’ve always been really interested in as a filmmaker, and a lot of my work explores is this contemporary urban Indigenous q***r experience,” he said.

Seventeen is set in and around Vancouver, and follows 3 Indigenous s*x workers over the course of a hectic day that sees them caught up in tasks like trying to come up with the money to secure housing, or trying to track down a missing passport on a tight timeline.

Ducharme, who first disclosed publicly his experience of s*x work eight years ago through his artistic work, says Seventeen isn’t directly portraying his exact lived experience.

“Something that I’ve tried to do is take maybe like visual cues or aspects of scenarios that for me feel signifying of my time as a s*x worker, as, someone trying to find housing, as someone grieving a parent, any of the sort of things that my characters go through in the film,” he said.

Ducharme says he never wanted the film to be focused on the traumatic aspects of what the characters are going through.

“I really wanted the focus of the film to be on the lesser shown moments of those days, and try to tell a story that felt like it sort of played with expectation as far as what people might expect when they see a narrative about, whether that be s*x workers or q***r indigenous people, the two-spirit community,” he said.

“It feels sort of like an ode to this tenderness that I feel the community has deserved, and specifically, I think also Indigenous women in cinema.”

The film is playing at next month’s Vancouver International Film Festival, coming to screens in the same city it was shot and set in.

Ducharme says there was a thoughtful approach to how the production was taking up public space while they were filming.

“ I really didn’t want to shut any streets down or, you know, be this massive sort of like displacer of community when I was telling a story about these streets and these people.”

Ducharme says he was coming to the film with an eye towards representing s*x work from an Indigenous perspective, which he says is still considered quite taboo and wrapped in negative connotations.

“I understand why. There is a lot of violence attached to this. And I think with this, you know, I chose to focus the narrative around representing us as people with chosen family, with real family, with duty to community, things that I think all indigenous people understand and can relate to.”

While the film is informed by his lived experience, and close consultation with members of the q***r Indigenous s*x work community in Vancouver, Ducharme is aware that it won’t be a monolith that speaks to everyone’s experience.

“We premiered the film last week in Toronto and, you know, I’ve seen some reactions to it and one of the things that I saw was someone felt that it didn’t feel authentic to them. And, you know, they’re also not a q***r Indigenous person doing s*x work in Vancouver. But I think that that type of reaction to this work actually, that makes sense to me in that I enjoy that because I think it proves that we are all different and that the things that bring us to this work or the circumstance that leads us here or whatever it may be, the choices, it’s all different,” he said.

“There are gonna be some people, there might even be some s*x workers in Vancouver who watch this and don’t feel that [it is authentic to their experience]. And I think that that is reflective of just how diverse and…common it is…these experiences are not all one.”

Ducharme says he hopes audiences take away the importance of family and relationships for people in situations like the characters in the film. He says while making the film, he was conscious of the relationship between how people are perceived and their ability to move through the world.

“When I came out as a s*x worker, I think there was maybe a protection that I felt…or, like a relief from being public about things and making creative work from a perspective of that. But I also think that I learned very quickly that perception is huge, in how people choose to sort of speak about you, or write about your work,” he said.

“All I’ve tried to do with this film, is sort of highlight the importance of relationships and of family and duty to community and these things that I think feel really prevalent to Indigenous communities in Canada, and around the world.”

Listen:

Justin Ducharme says his debut feature film Seventeen was inspired ...

09/21/2026

In 2013, walking a Winnipeg labyrinth helped Corey Bialek consider a contemplative question: what would it mean to not be depressed? The labyrinth was not curative, but it was therapeutic.

"There's no real magic to it, but the idea is you sort of like sift the central thought as you walk through, opine on what you've learned, and then sort of walk back out and take away with you those lessons," he said.

Bialek says the first time he was at the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth, in Winnipeg's King's Park, he was a little bit skeptical.

"I'm not really a self-help guy. But, I did it, and, it sort of like was the first moment, where I experienced sort of like a crack in my head, where like I found some small space to start thinking about a potential other than hopelessness, if you will."

He says he started going back on a daily basis.

"Every day I went back I sort of like bought into it a little bit more. I discovered a little bit more about myself and how I thought about my depression and how much it controls me and how much I can control it," he said. "It kind of offered this like very therapeutic space to be in nature, which is really important to me."

Bialek deals with persistent depressive disorder and major depressive disorder. In the essay Minding the City he shared how navigating public space can have both a positive and negative impact on him. He spoke with People First Radio on the subject.

The essay appears in the book Living Disability. Bialek says when he was first approached about contributing, he was hesitant.

"I have, really bad imposter syndrome. So I couldn't really imagine why my voice should be in a book. But what I ultimately came around to, I have a personal vested interest in normalizing discussions around mental health in a real way, where the language of depression and the experience of depression can be humanized in some way," he said.

"I just kind of thought, if I can be that familiar voice, I have to use it, and that's what ultimately got me to overcome my fear and anxiety about participating in this book."

Bialek spoke about the value of talking about mental health in an authentic way:

"I tend to hold myself prisoner in a way. Like, there's shame in being depressed. Despite all the self work I've done, all the therapy I've done, at the end of the day, I still carry with me embarrassment. Or that if I talk about it or if someone knows that I deal with depression, that I'm somehow deficient or weak or that it's a character issue.

And I think it's really easy to let the voice inside my head keep me in that prison. But it's through exercises like writing this book, talking to you. I mean, I came out to, to my work. Like, I told them I was in therapy, I was dealing with depression, that going into the office was causing a lot of anguish.

And just putting that out there and outing myself, it disarmed that voice inside of my head and took some of the power that depression has over me away. And so when I talk about humanizing mental health or normalizing it, it's not just, like, for other people to understand what I'm going through, it's also just for myself to understand what I'm going through and to give myself a bit more space just to maneuver through this world, in a way where I'm not so shackled by the various pain points that depression creates."

Listen to the full interview:

In 2013, walking a Winnipeg labyrinth helped Corey Bialek consider ...

09/10/2026

Speakers in Parksville and Courtenay joined a chorus of voices all over the world coming together in their communities to mark International Overdose Awareness Day.

Observed August 31 or the days leading up to it, International Overdose Awareness Day began as a barbecue remembrance event at the Salvation Army Needle Exchange in Melbourne Australia 25 years ago. It is meant to honour lives lost to toxic drug poisoning, provide education on the issues relevant to the crisis, and to explore evidence based overdose solutions.

People First Radio attended events in the Mid-Vancouver Island region, and brings you stories shared by people with first hand experience of overdose, addiction, and recovery. Speakers also include grieving family members like Jane McCormick, healthcare professionals like Dr. Eva Hemmerich, and politicians including federal NDP leader Avi Lewis.

Listen:
https://vancouverislandmentalhealthsociety.org/podcast/personal-connections-to-toxic-drug-crisis-shared-at-island-overdose-awareness-day-events/

09/03/2026

Rob Csernyik spoke with the program about his work covering the gambling beat, he's the author of A Losing Hand, a book exploring the issue of gambling related su***des in Canada. Head to our page for a link to the full interview.

08/31/2026

Rob Csernyik is an investigative journalist who lives in Atlantic Canada and covers the gambling beat. He’s the author of A Losing Hand, a new book that takes a look at the issue of gambling related su***des in Canada.

“ We have a very robust industry of legalized gambling, and yet we also have…a big preoccupation in this country when it comes to mental health and su***de prevention,” he said.

Csernyik says in the early days of legalized gambling in Canada, there were a number of stories in the media about gambling related su***des.

“ I would say, kind of early to mid two thousands, they mostly just petered out of the headlines. And it was obvious that this was not a topic that had disappeared,” he said.

In 2003, chief coroners across the country agreed to pay more attention to tracking gambling related su***des. Csernyik set out to explore the results of that decision.

“ I figured there would be a lot of very clear data, you know, twenty-plus years after the fact,” he said. “But in the end, the amount of data provided was quite minimal…and the numbers, quite frankly, weren’t large enough to really tell us a data story like that.”

“Instead, the bigger story ended up being, well, why has this fallen by the wayside? And why now, at a time when we should be able to look at the past and figure out how the new expansion of gambling might affect this issue, why is it that we can’t do that because we simply don’t have enough concrete info here in Canada?”

Csernyik says that record keeping in Canada is not adequate on the issue of gambling related su***des.

“ I would say quite confidently, we can say that as a nation, we are not keeping track of these deaths, and we do not understand the full scope of that human cost of the gambling industry.”

He says that as a society, there hasn’t been a reckoning on the issue of what we want government run or regulated gambling operations to be.

“One of the main questions that I think we haven’t grappled with is more or less what is a lottery corporation or what is an iGaming corporation?” He said. “What I mean when I ask this is what is the intent?”

He cites the example of cannabis in his home province of New Brunswick as providing a counterexample.

“There is now a provincially owned cannabis store, but they tend to be pretty discreet locations. And, they’re only open set hours, and there’s a lot of little protocols that they follow…it’s just sort of designed that way because they don’t want people to say overconsume. They don’t want a certain reputation around the industry. And I think that’s very different than what we see in the gambling industry because we haven’t really asked those questions.”

“I think a big part of it is would we rather see a gambling industry be, say run for the sake of having a legalized gambling option so that people who want to play have an option, it may not be a fancy option like in Las Vegas, but something serviceable where if they want to spend a little bit of money and have a bit of entertainment, and they’ll know that they’ll get that money back and that they can sort of feel, I guess, a bit safer doing it, than using an unregulated version.

But that is a very different kind of model than, say, you know, the heavily advertised iGaming industry where you have all of these big industry proponents, these big American companies, getting licenses for websites and everything. And I think that is a distinction that we probably should have thought about a lot more.”

Listen to the full interview:

Saint John based Csernyik is author of A Losing Hand

08/27/2026

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction(CCSA) has shared a resource meant to help smaller Canadian cities address substance use harms.

“The Playbook for Action has over 50 evidence-based interventions that a community could draw from,” said Chandni Sondagar, a senior knowledge broker with the organization.

The playbook is a document outlining a number of municipally led interventions that communities could implement, along with examples from across Canada. The suggested measures range from workplace substance use policies, to support for opioid agonist therapy providers in communities.

While healthcare is a provincial issue, Sondagar says there are ways for municipalities to move the needle.

“ When we think about health, it doesn’t fall within the purview of municipalities. That largely sits within the provinces. But with that being said, that doesn’t mean that municipalities are powerless. They have a number of levers that they could be leaning on,” she said.

“It’s things like developing a community safety and well being plan, for example, or developing a substance use response strategy…this could also be things like offering community spaces to organizations that offer different services or social services and health supports, being able to bring together partners.”

The playbook is accompanied by an implementation guide, meant to help cities start down the road to taking action on the issue of substance use related harms.

“It essentially walks communities through this step-by-step process of…doing a community needs assessment, understanding what their local challenges are, what kind of assets and resources that they have and what their priorities are to then determine which of the interventions from this playbook their community could consider for implementation,” said Sondagar.

She says this is a complex issue, which municipalities are on the front lines of.

“What I really want to reiterate is that communities aren’t powerless. There are levers that they can be pulling on, and the playbook and guide can be a great resource as they embark on their process to understand what a response looks like. And here at CCSA, we’re more than happy to support. So if communities do want to learn more, I do encourage you to reach out to us,” she said.

“We’d be more than happy to have a conversation to see what we could do to support your community.”

Listen:
https://vancouverislandmentalhealthsociety.org/podcast/national-organization-offers-playbook-for-small-cities-to-address-substance-use-harms/

See the playbook:
https://www.ccsa.ca/en/playbook-action-practical-interventions-small-cities-can-use-tackle-canadas-substance-use-crisis

"Communities aren't powerless" says CCSA knowledge broker