I started taking first aid courses when I was about 11 or 12 years old, as a young Air Cadet.
Our commanding officer was a paramedic with access to the ambulance bay in the tiny town where we would meet, and I took to it immediately.
We formed a competitive team and spent the next few years travelling around B.C. and Alberta to prove our skills on a larger stage. These competitions involved simulated mass-casualty emergency responses, such as "school bus crash on highway."
I was able to put these skills to the test in real life one day, when a highway crash beside my family's home threw me into swift action.
Is this a lot for a pre-teen to process, even as a simulation? In retrospect, of course it was.
But my demonstrated ability to handle chaos calmly, while running through the necessary first aid response, was probably the first flare out into the universe that I'd also make a great reporter. Not a lot ruffled me then, everyone seemed to notice, and that is still the case 35 years later.
Because of this I've been called strong, which is awfully nice but not really accurate.
Here's the thing. Just because not a lot bothers me doesn't mean that nothing bothers me. As one could imagine, a long career in journalism has exposed me to a lot of trauma. Some of it I have witnessed personally, and have had to report on. Some of it I've heard secondhand from those who experienced it, which I've recently learned is referred to as secondary trauma.
Still, every now and then a trauma will come along that is too much for me to bear.
The first of these came in the form a report from the RCMP, transmitted over the fax machine back in the very early 2000s. In those days, when that machine fired up in the old Progress newsroom on Spadina Avenue, one of us would jump up and stand there to grab whatever was on its way through the ether.
I was a rookie reporter, with a lot to prove to my editor at the time.
I pulled the paper off the fax and read that a teenaged girl had been killed by a car while she tried to cross a busy road.
And just like that, everything I had ever shoved down deep into the recesses of my heart and mind spilled up out of me and I was inconsolable. I can still summon up the feelings I had that day. My eyes welled, my heart sunk, my skin got cold and I wanted to throw up.
I ran to the bathroom and fell to the floor, clutching the fax in my hand.
I had no idea who this girl was but I clearly identified with her. I was not much older, now that I think about it. And just a few years before this, I was hit by a vehicle. Yet I was still here to speak about it. It all just seemed so unfair and cruel. If I could have given my life to her at that moment, I would have.
And wow, was I ever ashamed in that moment for having these feelings. Nobody had ever let me know it was OK to be anything but "strong." So, I didn't know what to do with this surprising grief.
I thought I was supposed to be a tough reporter, thick-skinned, and impervious to things like sad feelings. So, how would I ever walk back into the newsroom, tears on my cheeks, red-rimmed eyes, and nose full of pathetic snot?
I realized the story had to be done, and it wasn't going to get done from that bathroom stall. So I wiped my face and gathered myself and braced for the return to the newsroom.
Yet, instead of derision for my very human feelings, I was met with kindness and understanding.
"It's just proof you're human," said reporter Penny Lett, matter-of-factly, and that has echoed in my mind ever since.
And while most of the time I can muddle through a work day without being too affected by the various tragedies we encounter, that's not always the case. The last week was difficult for a lot of people, and there is nothing wrong with feeling grief over the deaths of people you've never met.
Our first responders have been tasked with incredible amounts of trauma this summer. Drownings, fatal ATV crashes, highway tragedy and more. A photo was shared recently of a police officer standing at a memorial for the child who drowned outside the Leisure Centre, with his head bowed.
These are the moments that are necessary to help heal. This officer demonstrated humanity by openly acknowledging the grief in this situation.
It was a reminder to me to do the same, and that we are all human.
