During the suicide crisis, Jan Gladish’s mother moved her and her six siblings out of the community, for fear they might be swallowed up by the despair claiming so many Heiltsuk youth.
The start of the turnaround can be traced to Larry Jorgensen, a young, mental health bureaucrat from southern Ontario who arrived in Bella Bella by way of Alberta, where he’d helped reorganize the province’s mental health department.
The graduation rate in Bella Bella now tops 85 per cent, according to Gladish, up from just two per cent in the ’70s. There are still youth at risk in the community, but Brown says he can’t remember the last time there was a suicide death by a young person; Jorgensen says it’s been more than 15 years.