Torie Sepah M.D.,
Forensic Psychiatrist
in California Prisons
March 2025, An interview with Torie Sepah M.D., a forensic psychiatrist at several California prisons.
Archives for April 2026
Ride to Resilience
This documentary follows a professional mountain biker and firefighter through a challenging year.
The film explores themes of trauma and mental health, alongside the camaraderie of friendship and the restorative power of nature.
It’s a raw and honest portrayal of personal growth and healing.
52,310 views
Premiered Jul 8, 2025
Ride to Resilience — a raw, real, and slightly reckless documentary that follows professional mountain biker and full-time firefighter, Steve Vanderhoek, through one of the most intense years of his life.
It’s a story of trauma, PTSD, and depression, but also of friendship, forest therapy, and the quiet power of simply staying in the fight.
Steve opens up like never before — about the weight of what first responders carry, the way adrenaline can mask pain, and how riding a bike through the woods can sometimes feel like the only way to breathe again.
The film is independently produced, self-funded, and still in progress.
Over the past year, this story has grown into something far bigger than we ever imagined.
The feedback we’ve received has shown us how deeply it resonates—and how much potential it has to create real impact in our community and beyond.
Despite that, securing additional funding—especially within the mountain bike industry—has been an ongoing challenge.
[Read more…]
BC News: Faces of B.C.’s
10-year Toxic Drug Emergency
More than 18,000 people have died of drug overdoses since British Columbia declared the issue a public health emergency on April 14, 2016.
The crisis has touched the lives of many more survivors, and the friends and families of victims.
Here are some of their stories.
THE CANADIAN PRESS, by Darryl Dyck, April 9th, 2026
‘HE HAD A TWINKLE IN HIS EYE’
When Michelle Jansen learned her 20-year-old son, Brandon, had died from fentanyl poisoning at the treatment facility where he went for help, she said she knew she had to make a decision “in a matter of seconds.”
She could sink into despair at losing the child she described as having a quick wit and a love of animals, or she could find a way to move forward with her two other sons.
“So I could either sink, which at the time is your preferred approach, you know? Or pick yourself up and fight and excel, and that was the decision, the latter, that I made because I knew my boys would be watching,” she said.
Brandon Jansen’s death at a drug treatment facility in Powell River, B.C., on March 7, 2016, came about five weeks before B.C. declared the public health emergency.
“He was very charismatic,” his mother said. “He had a twinkle in his eye. He was a communicator. He would come into a room. He wouldn’t necessarily know anyone and he would smile and be warm and congenial. At the treatment centres, all the feedback I got was he would take people under his wing.”
Michelle Jansen became a voice for those who had lost someone in the crisis, launching a foundation in her son’s name and speaking out against what she saw as government inaction.
A decade later, the frustration can still be heard in her voice.
“People are dying. If we had a gunman running around, killing five or six people a day on average, you better believe that the government’s going to put the money behind it to make sure that that stops, that we’re going to get that gunman,” she said.
But after years of fundraising, Jansen said the family decided to pause the foundation, adding that it was difficult to relive the situation.
“It’s only getting worse. It’s getting worse and nobody’s listening,” she said. [Read more…]