Rose's Cantina

This is an ongoing series of my columns and articles that appeared in Canadian newspapers. This story appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on August 3, 2013.  Thanks to Postmedia and the Citizen for permission to reprint it.  It's been a hard and arduous journey for my son Nicholas who has faced many challenges over the years. Born into privilege, he got a good start but his soul was literally fractured by a bitter divorce that left him, for five years, in an abusive situation with his stepmother and father. Then he was sent by Dad to a boarding school where he was subjected to so much abuse that he and his classmates won a financial settlement. When he came back to live with me he was a broken boy, and ended up on the street and lived in a cloud of drugs and alcohol while in his teens. But he clawed his way back, thanks to the love of a good woman -- his little daughter Skylar who is the light of his life. And he reclaimed his life through writing. This month, Nicholas publi...

It's been over five years since Michelle departed our lives, and since then, I have been drawn to any headline, every story and whatever I could get my hands on regarding mental health, depression and suicide. Over the years, I kept returning to one burning question: what saved me that Michelle could have benefitted from? If I deserved a second chance, why not her? -- Nicholas Gagnier, Ground Zero Michelle, the girl that my son was writing about in his new poetry anthology, was a constant presence in our house during high school. She was shy, waiflike, with a healthy head of blonde hair. She was always polite, rarely a bother, but was clearly troubled. Scott drove her home once after finding her crying in our bathroom. All she could say was "sorry". Like all the other kids, Michelle proudly graduated high school and then set off to pursue her dreams. But things didn't work out for Michelle who battled demons on multiple levels. About a year later, we heard t...