Last Sunday (June 25) would have been Corbin Fehr’s 27th birthday.
Fehr died of toxic drugs on April 27, 2022 in a recovery house in Surrey.
Since then, his mother Hellena Fehr has advocated for stricter inspections of recovery houses and safe consumption sites.
“Last year on Corbin’s birthday, we sat across the street from the recovery house where he died and just glared at it,” Hellena said. “I didn’t want to do that again this year. I wanted to do something a little bit more proactive.”
Originally Fehr and a Misson Overdose Community Action Team member were going to pass out sandwiches on the anniversary of Corbin’s death in April.
However, plans emerged to organize an event at Diamond Head Motor Inn in Mission for his 27th birthday on June 25.
With help from local businesses, Lynn McFedries, Krystyne Tagaroulias and Kenny Braich, Hellena hosted a “Feed the People” event to feed approximately 750 people on Sunday.
“We put it off until his birthday and then people started wanting to help,” Hellena said. “I put it out on Mission BC and Neighbours and the other community sites and within 24 hours, we had enough to feed 200 people. There was so much community support from the people, from families – it just got huge.”
Hundreds came out for the event, including families that experienced a toxic drug death of their own. A table displaying Corbin’s face among other victims of toxic drugs drew powerful reactions from the crowd, Hellena says.
“We had people on that table that were parents, some people that weren’t. We had a couple of guys that were [close to] 40 and a boy that was barely just barely 15 years old,” Hellena said. “It hits everybody. It’s extreme hubris to think it’s not going to touch you.”
Going forward, Hellena plans to hold the event every year on Corbin’s birthday
“[Corbin] loved to eat. So he would have loved having food and having it made easily accessible to the people that would appreciate it the most,” Hellena said.
She says there are few families that haven’t been affected by the toxic drug crisis.
“It’s not just poor people. It’s not just people that have addicted parents. It’s everybody. Our family has been in this town for six generations. You know, it happened to us, you just never know until the police are knocking at your door.”
Hellena says she’s nowhere near the same person she was before Corbin died.
“It was a brutal experience,” she said. “I have a really hard time with parenting my three live children. Thankfully, they’re all grown adults with children of their own but I have to keep it together as best as I can.”
Corbin spent time at the shelter in Mission and the Diamond Head Motor Inn. Hellena says Corbin was a fentanyl user and he struggled a lot, mostly in Mission.
On the night he died, Corbin was using both fentanyl and benzodiazepines, Hellena said.
“My son was dead in less than a minute from when he smoked it that night. The government needs to start looking at these cases because this is murder. It’s murdering our children,” Hellena said.
In September, she spoke as a delegation to Mission’s council to ask the city for more supervision of recovery homes. She says bylaws need to be changed to allow for random unannounced inspections of recovery houses.
Council voiced their support for Hellena following the delegation and Mission Mayor Paul Horn said staff were already asked to begin the process of looking at the city’s recovery home bylaws.
“It’s important for us to revise it and review it, take a look and see where it is and how current those bylaws are,” Horn said in September.
The mayor says council is still awaiting a staff report.
After Corbin died, each council member – in addition to MLA Pam Alexis and MP Brad Vis – met with Hellena.
“Mission actually showed me on a small scale what I needed to be doing on a bigger scale,” she said.
Hellena says she sent Corbin’s case to Ottawa to have it filtered back down to the Attorney General of BC.
“So now we wait to see what’s going to happen because there needs to be some culpability aside from on my son,” she said.
Before her son’s death, Hellena says she never would have thought of supporting safe consumption.
“It changes your outlook on a lot of things,” she said.
@dillon_white
dillon.white@missioncityrecord.com
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