Movember funds important retreat for B.C. fire fighters
Posted November 27, 2023 7:59 pm.
Last Updated November 27, 2023 8:03 pm.
There are just a few days left for Movember, the yearly moustache-growing fundraiser for prostate cancer and men’s health. All month long, CityNews has brought you stories about what those funds help make possible.
Today, CityNews is talking about B.C.’s Fire Fighter Resiliency Program — a three-and-a-half-day, in-person retreat held at Loon Lake near Maple Ridge.
“People come there to be shoulder-to-shoulder to talk about how to deal with acquired stress injuries and help process that so that they’re better fathers, mothers, human beings and get them ready for further treatment, if required, and take people from surviving to thriving,” explained Steve Farina, Executive Vice President of the British Columbia Professional Fire Fighters Association.
Farina is not only an organizer of the program, but also a past participant. He says it helped make him a better parent to his daughter.
“I wasn’t the best version of myself and I wasn’t the best father,” he admitted. “Going through that program, examining my own childhood and my own timeline through life, it really gave me a new perspective and a new appreciation of her for sure.”
Without Movember, Farina says organizers would have to start charging participants a fee which would now run close to $4,000 each.
“We’ve put over 200 people through this program now and the police are starting to put people through [too],” he said. “Movember funding was instrumental in keeping the costs low because we know money is always a barrier and we want to eliminate all those barriers to access help.”
This November also marks 20 years of Movember, including 17 right here in Canada.
Initially conceived as a way to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer, it has since evolved beyond simply growing a moustache to support multiple facets of men’s physical and mental wellness.
