By Dan Sherven
Mitch Bourbonniere helps the homeless community in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He assists at-risk youth and advocates for missing people. Bourbonniere has received two Governor General Awards and the Order of Manitoba. Additionally, he was awarded the Medal of Bravery for diving into a river to save a young woman’s life.
“I have a non-religious street mission that I do on Main Street in Winnipeg,” Bourbonniere says. “We hand out food and warm clothing to our unsheltered population in Winnipeg, and I do seven of these walks a week.” Bourbonniere also cares for an adult son who lives with schizophrenia.
“The reason I do the work is to honor my son,” Bourbonniere says. “I [originally] thought maybe he had a really bad depression. But then he started getting very paranoid; kind of delusional around—he thought that people were out to harm him, and then that grew stronger and stronger and stronger, until one day he actually broke into some businesses just to go through their filing cabinets; just to see if they had any information on him.”
“The one brutal act of self-harm he did to himself was to take himself out because he didn’t want to be captured by some bad people; and held captive and tortured.” Bourbonniere adds that his son “was so fearful. That’s why he tried to end his life. He’s had auditory and probably visual hallucinations. He’s had delusions; paranoia.” Those are all symptoms of schizophrenia.
Bourbonniere says, “It’s by the grace of God, and the efforts of myself and my network, that we can maintain him in the community. I just worry that after I pass away, there’ll be no one to look after him, and he’ll end up homeless; he’ll end up on the streets. So I’m almost—not because of that, but it’s almost like a paying-it-forward.” A paying-it-forward through the work Bourbonniere does in helping the homeless.
Sometimes, Bourbonniere wonders if it would be better for his son to pass away before he does because there might not be anyone left to care for his son. Bourbonniere also wonders if it would be better for them to pass away at the same time. So maybe “we could just go to heaven together.” With that said, he sees all religions as having a commonality “about surrender. It’s about faith. It’s about trust. It’s about the battle between light and shadow.” To paraphrase his further comments on his own spirituality, he strongly believes in reality’s oneness.
Bourbonniere says he “was born into the Catholic Church. I was an altar boy and I went to Sunday School and I learned all about Jesus, which I still hold those stories close to my heart; of how Jesus lived. I have no problem with Jesus. I have some other problems with the Church itself; the Man-made Church and its role in the history of our world.” Yet Bourbonniere says, “I certainly believe in the Spirit of Jesus and the stories of Jesus.”
Bourbonniere notes, “From time to time, I’ve been angry. I’ve been upset with Creation, and God, and the universe: Why would you give [my son] any suffering? He didn’t do anything [wrong] to anybody.” Bourbonniere adds that “[his son] didn’t deserve to have psychosis [a disconnection from reality; the hallmark symptom of schizophrenia]. He didn’t deserve to struggle. Why couldn’t you have given him just a regular life? But I mean that [questioning] comes and goes. It’s not persistent or lasting, but it does come and go.”
Bourbonniere tells the story of how his son once threw a large tube TV out of a third-floor apartment window. The landlord called Bourbonniere to clean up the mess in the parking lot. While Bourbonniere was doing so, there was a line-up of cars on that street, with people yelling and honking at Bourbonniere for blocking the street with the TV as He was trying to move things out of the way.
“It felt like the weight of the world was crashing down on me. I remember thinking: If they only knew. If they only knew what my son goes through; what we go through as a family—would they be treating us like this? So it was a good teaching because now I don’t assume anybody—even if they behave badly, I don’t make any assumption about them. Because no one knows what the other is going through.” He says that with the TV: “It felt like I was carrying the Cross across Saint Mary’s Road [where the apartment was]. And that cross was the burden of my son’s illness.” Still, Bourbonniere does his work on the streets seven days a week to honour his son.
In the Archdiocese of Regina, Emmaus Family Support Ministries provides spiritual, peer-led support for mental health caregivers, people similar to Bourbonniere. The ministry also assists Catholic parishes in establishing their own mental health ministries.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, call 9-1-1. 9-8-8 is the newest suicide support line in Canada that provides urgent, live support by phone and text. Additional support resources may be found here.
Watch the full interview with Mitch Bourbonniere on Dan Sherven Interviews.
Dan Sherven is the author of three books, including the number one bestseller Classified: Off the Beat ‘N Path. Sherven is also an award-winning journalist, writing for several publications. Find Sherven’s work.
