Fleming College

Rick Mayoh is one of Fleming College’s Premier’s Awards nominees. The awards – given out each February at the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario annual conference – recognize the contribution of outstanding college graduates. Rick, a graduate of the college’s Drug and Alcohol Counsellor program (2004), has been waging an ongoing battle against the demons that face Inuit society, a culture that has been crippled by high rates of addiction, abuse and suicide. Counselling Inuit clients struggling with trauma and addiction at the Mamisarvik Healing Centre in Ottawa, Rick is a vital part of the eight-week residential program of non-profit Tungasuvvingat Inuit, the only comprehensive Inuit agency of its kind in Canada. “I feel life moved me into a position to do this,” he says from his home in Ottawa. On a day-to-day basis, Rick’s work involves extensive group therapy – primarily on anger management, assertiveness and aftercare – and he is also a residential counsellor at the Pigiarvik House residence, which includes individual counselling, and facilitating cultural and recreational activities. He says working to heal the trauma the Inuit people face – including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, violence, loss of identity, homelessness and sexual, physical and emotional abuse – is as challenging as his field gets. The Inuit have one of the highest suicide rates in the world at 11 times the national average – 40 times the national average for males aged 15 to 24 – and Canada’s highest rate of violence and violence against women at 10 times the national average. Rick’s journey to Mamisarvik is connected to his own recovery from addiction that began 12 years ago. An NHL writer and sports journalist at the Ottawa Citizen for more than 20 years, Rick’s interest swung to the world of drug and alcohol counselling when he started working on his recovery. “I was so grateful for how things were going and there was a strong element of wanting to give back,” he says. “My whole motivation is to make my work an extension of my own recovery” . As his health improved, Rick’s interest “exploded” in that direction. After leaving the Ottawa Citizen in 1996, he was a freelance reporter for six years in Ottawa before starting at Fleming in 2003.Despite living down the street from Algonquin College, which also has an addiction program, he chose to make the seven-hour round-trip down Highway 7 to Peterborough every week. “One of Fleming’s biggest attractions is that its program is so outstanding. There isn’t one like it in the country.”The fact that the University of Lethbridge accepts every credit in the program at face value was a testament for Rick to the way faculty members Bill Peacock and Joe Ellis built the program. Commuting more than 100 times from Ottawa in a rusty 15-year-old Honda, Rick finished the program at the top of his class with a 95 per cent average. His field placement, arranged by Fleming, took him to the Caribbean island of Antigua to one of the top recovery facilities in the world, Crossroads, founded and owned by musician Eric Clapton. Now Rick is combining is burgeoning knowledge of Inuit culture (he’s even committed to learning the language of Inuktitut) and his passion for journalism. In his down time, he works on writing articles on the plight of the Inuit. “I’m doing advocacy and not just counselling. I’m trying to raise southern awareness to help the the Inuit get the help they need. They seem to have a stranglehold on every negative demographic,” he says. However, despite the tough job of helping Inuit through the many desperate issues they face, he has found counselling very rewarding. “You see the shape people come in, in the first week of the program, and then you see the transformation as they leave after the eighth week – it’s incredible. Seeing that progress so quickly is hugely satisfying, knowing you’ve been a part of that. You’re able to see the impact of the agency’s work quite quickly.” Of the 13 people on staff at Mamisarvik, 10 are Inuit. As a non-Inuit counsellor, “I’ve got the biggest learning curve,” says Rick. “What I can give back is experience, but I’m getting back more than what I am giving.”