Man journeys from Niagara Falls to Thorold to honour opioid victims

More than 55,000 Canadians have died from opioid-related causes since national tracking began in 2016. On Friday, one Ontario father is walking across Niagara to make sure those lives are not forgotten.

“This is 10 years since B.C. declared a public health emergency in relation to the opioid crisis,” says Greg McPherson, the founder of On the Road 4 Mental Health.

The year 2016 was when the Public Health Agency of Canada began tracking opioid-related deaths, overdoses, and hospital visits nationally.

On Friday, McPherson is walking from Niagara Falls to Thorold — a journey of about 44 kilometres.

“Approximately, just over fifty-five thousand steps — one step in memory of each person who’s been lost in the first 10 years of the opioid crisis,” McPherson says.

The walk is the first of 10 memorial walks planned across Ontario this year.

The route takes McPherson from Niagara Falls through Queenston, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Virgil and Glendale before finishing in Thorold.

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But for McPherson, this walk isn’t really just about the numbers. It is also about his son, Aric, who died in 2019 at the age of 22.

“He had been fighting depression and anxiety and when he got lost in transition from youth to the adult system he started using drugs to try to get through the day,” McPherson said.
What started as a way to work through his own grief has turned into a mission to help other families feel seen and heard. His message is resonating with people he meets along the route.

“If you’re losing a child that’s something that’s unspeakable — it’s heartbreaking for anybody who’s a parent or as a human being … Addiction is real,” says the bystander Jay Mitchell.

From the streets of Niagara Falls to the finish line in Thorold, McPherson will spend most of the day on foot.

He says every kilometre is a chance to start a conversation about a crisis that continues to impact communities right across the country.

That conversation is happening. For McPherson, that is the goal. Not just to remember those who have been lost — but to make sure they are remembered as people.

“When it doesn’t happen to you when it’s not somebody you know, they’re merely a number, but to a lot of other people that is a real person,” McPherson says.

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