Photo courtesy of Taylor Balfour.

Two smiling women sit in a booth after lunch: Taylor Balfour, sitting on the left, sports a huge grin while her sister Rachel smiles sheepishly at the camera.

Balfour had went to visit her sister Rachel who was studying at the University of Alberta in Nov. 2018. In Feb. 2019, Rachel died of a fentanyl overdose in her dorm room.

“Rachel never wrote in her diary,” said Balfour. “The last entry was the day that she died, and she had essentially written ‘I don’t know what I have taken.’ ”

The Balfour family found out about Rachel’s death three days after when police knocked on the door of their Regina home. Taylor had already suspected her sister’s death because of a post to a subreddit thread that existed for the U of A when the family had not heard from Rachel.

“I hated it,” said Balfour. “I had read that subreddit a few hours before the police showed up. Then I knew it was her who all those people were talking about.”

Balfour is calling for more funding to be put into harm reduction. While her sister’s death was recorded in Edmonton statistics, she said more action is needed in her home province of Saskatchewan. Regina overdose death rates have doubled from 2019 to 2021, where more than 450 people died from overdose deaths last year.

“Saying ‘Don’t do drugs!’ is not an option for people who are suffering from additional factors like intergenerational trauma, abuse, poverty,” said Balfour. “For some people, it’s not that simple.”

The Saskatchewan Coroners Service Report suggests that in Jan. 2022 there have been a suspected 49 drug toxicity deaths in the province.

Kelsey Dumont, a board member for the Regina Needle Recovery and pharmacist, is troubled by the amount of overdoses that occurred in Sask., last year. Dumont said Saskatchewan’s overdose death rate per capita is almost equal to the overdose rate of British Columbia. Dumont explained fentanyl is the cause of many overdoses in Sask.

Sask April 2021 overdose deaths 35:
22 people died in Regina
8 people died in Saskatoon

Literally the only difference in services between the two cities is Saskatoon has a Safe Consumption Site.@everetthindley @PremierScottMoe @MerrimanPaul @JustinTrudeau @ryanmeili https://t.co/qoJrcp6a2i

— prairiehr (@prairiehr) May 5, 2021

“Almost all of the fentanyl that’s on the streets in Regina and Saskatoon, has benzodiazepines (benzos) in them now,” said Dumont.

Benzodiazepines can cause respiratory depression as any other opioid. The problem is that antidotes to opioid overdoses like Nalaxone and Narcan cannot reverse the effects of benzos like it can for fentanyl. Dumont said to help avoid future overdoses,  there needs to be a safe supply for users.

“If we don’t have access to safe supply, people are going to continue to overdose,” said Dumont.

Shylo Stevenson, founder of Regina Needle Recovery is troubled by the rising overdose rates in Sask.

“The Heritage neighbourhood is what I’m now calling the Vancouver Downtown Eastside of Regina,” said Stevenson.

Stevenson was one of the main organizers for Camp Hope where he said overdoses were faced on a daily basis. Stevenson said Camp Hope shined a light on the opioid crisis for people who were previously unaware it was occurring.

“When people are administering drugs in alleys, it’s out of sight out of mind,” said Stevenson. “But what resulted from Camp Hope was people seeing the issue that we have, it’s not just providing a welfare check or or a house to these people. We’ve changed many people’s perspective on that.”

It has been three years since Rachel Balfour died of an overdose. In commemoration, Taylor raised over $1000 for Prairie Harm Reduction, a safe consumption site in Saskatoon.

“I never would have thought of doing this prior to Rachel’s death,” said Balfour. “I’m one of those people where I take a crappy situation and turn it into something beneficial for other people. I think this money will go towards a beneficial cause.”