"If you are persistent enough, and you have the right strategy, then you can build a movement. And a movement can move a large boulder up a steep hill when we all push together."
 

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2018

 

She was one.

 

It was her idea. 

 

The way we could change the system.

 

Two years prior, she and I had agreed that police were not the best option to respond to people experiencing acute mental health distress. We thought, “What if there were mobile teams of mental health and crisis professionals who could respond instead?” There had to be a better way. And maybe this was it. We booked meetings and asked our friends in the industry what they thought. Everybody replied with some version of that’s not possible. We weren’t deterred. However, my attention shifted. 

 

Hers did not. 

 

2020

 

Here we were two years later, conversing about that system-changing idea. She had quietly spent the last two years researching, connecting, and problem solving, essentially building a blueprint for the model. And now with the deaths of George Floyd in the United States and Regis Korchinski-Pacquet in Toronto, a conversation opened up. A window, really. Everybody everywhere was talking about how to make police interactions safer. 

 

It was our time.

 

But I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the journey. I said to her, “Rachel, you have it all laid out—you don’t need me for this.” I was recovering from a bout of COVID-19 that almost killed me, experiencing long COVID before we even knew what long COVID was, and wanted to focus on my health and my family. But Rachel was persistent. Eventually, she convinced me that she did in fact need me—that I wasn’t just integral, I was irreplaceable. I joined the mission.

 

Now we were two.

 

At the time, I was pretty well-regarded in the mental health community—an influencer one might say—and this benefitted us in a couple of key ways. First, I’d built many connections in the industry. Secondly, because of my reputation, when I spoke people listened.

 

I sent out a tweet that asked folks to imagine a non-police mobile crisis service that responded to people experiencing acute mental health distress. 

 

That tweet didn’t just chirp; it breathed fire like a dragon and  swept the skies of the Twitterverse because people were ready to believe in something they’d never seen before.

 

A week later, Rachel and I were booking media appearances to talk about our model. 

 

Two weeks after that we registered a non-profit—Reach Out Response Network, a.k.a. RORN—to organize and legitimize our advocacy efforts. Soon we had hundreds of volunteers, the media, and a whole city behind us. They were the real driving force for change. If it were just Rachel and I, we would have been a whisper in the wind. But together, as a community, we were a roar from the mountaintops. Our echo reverberated, thawing a frozen system into something malleable again. . 

 

Change happened like an avalanche.

 

We contracted with the city; had meetings with dozens of politicians, representatives from Toronto Police and emergency services; organized community town halls; and so much more. A year and a half after we started our mission the city said yes—they would implement a modified version of our model. We had done it. We changed the system. Rachel. Me. And everybody.

 

2025

 

I tell this story, intentionally, at a time when the train we’re on is rattling off track and threatening to derail, to say that change is possible. And it can start with just you. Or just you and a friend. If you are persistent enough, and you have the right strategy, then you can build a movement. And a movement can move a large boulder up a steep hill when we all push together. It is possible. 

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