THUNDER BAY - Having seen the impacts of a chronic disease plaguing northern Ontario communities, Garry Sugarhead said he wanted to take the steps necessary to start raising awareness, and that involved taking thousands of steps.
On Wednesday, Sugarhead arrived in Thunder Bay after completing a 700-kilometre walk for diabetes awareness and held a ceremony at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre.
“The reason why I’m walking for diabetes is I lost friends,” Sugarhead said.
The walk began in Pickle Lake on May 30 and Sugarhead said he wants to see First Nations leaders and government working together to provide better services to people living with diabetes and preventing more people from being diagnosed.
“To see people working together, the government of Canada or Ontario, we need to stand together for our people and any people,” he said. “People here in Thunder Bay or Sioux Lookout or people along the highway in small towns. People come out and share stories, good stories, and recovery stories.”
According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, 21.6 per cent of First Nations people living on-reserve are diagnosed with type two diabetes, well above the 4.8 per cent average of people living off-reserve. Diabetes rates in Indigenous people is also five times more prevalent compared to non-Indigenous people living in Ontario.
Charlie Boyce, originally from Fort Hope, was diagnosed with diabetes 40 years ago and for the last eight years, he has been forced to move to Thunder Bay to receive dialysis treatment three times a week.
Boyce said when he was first diagnosed, there was no diabetes education available at all in his community.
“That’s one of the problems reserves have, they don’t have a proper nurse or doctor teaching about diabetes,” he said.
During his walk, Sugarhead kept in contact with Sol Mamakwa, the recently elected MPP for Kiiwetinoong. Having served as the co-chair of the Meno Ya Win Health Centre in Sioux Lookout and the lead health advisor for Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Mamakwa said Sugarhead asked him to be in Thunder Bay when he finished his walk.
“Diabetes is a very prevalent in the north in our communities and in the region,” he said. “I’m quite aware of the amount of needless deaths and unnecessary suffering that happens with respect to this disease.”
Mamakwa said some of the services created under the health care system have not served the people living in the north and changes need to be made in approaches to education and programming. He is hoping he can start sharing the stories of the people’s experience in the north while sitting as an official opposition MPP at Queen’s Park.
“One of the things that is really critical for me is truth telling, patient stories, people stories,” he said.
“The people have to believe that the leaders, the politicians they need to know what is happening. A lot of people don’t know what is happening up north.”
“This is Ontario, this is 2018,” Mamakwa continued. “We need to change. Let the people in Queen’s Park and Toronto know what is happening. That is where I can become a voice for the north and the riding itself.”
This is not the first time Sugarhead has taken his message for change to the highways and roadways of Northern Ontario. In 2014, he walked more than 350 kilometres to raise awareness for suicide and substance abuse.
But this time, having had double bypass surgery the year before, the walk did pose some challenges but nothing Sugarhead wasn’t willing to push through to continue to make strides toward raising diabetes awareness in the North.
“They told me I recover really fast, that’s why I walk,” Sugarhead said. “It’s very challenging doing a 700-kilometre walk. It’s not easy. But I think about the walk every day, I think about people, we should work together. First Nations and government and a lot of other people as well.”
