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From the joy they saw as he hung out with friends, to his love of sports, parents Rick and Debbie West are working through their grief.
The White City family is finding a way to build a legacy in memory of their 17-year-old son Lincoln West, after he died in a car crash east of Regina on June 15. Despite their grief, Rick and Debbie are doing all they can to remember their son in the most positive way.
“Lincoln was everybody’s friend, even in the classroom. He always said, ‘I just want to make people laugh, I want to make people smile,’” said Debbie.
“He was kind to people, even the odd time someone wasn’t kind to him, and I knew about it. He would always say, ‘Well, it’s okay. He must just be going through something.’”
Debbie said her son loved sports ever since he was a young boy.
“There wasn’t a sport he didn’t try,” she said. “He played soccer when he was little and started hockey when he was three years old. He was still playing hockey, baseball, basketball, football, and the occasional golf game.”
Now, the West family is raising funds to honour their son’s legacy and help support other kids struggling with their mental health in the community and across the province.
A GoFundMe, launched shortly after Lincoln’s death, has already surpassed its $40,000 goal with every dollar raised to be donated towards mental health services for youth in Saskatchewan.
The Wests said they want to try and prevent what their family is going through from happening again.
“It is going to be Lincoln’s legacy moving forward,” said Rick. “This is a tragedy that we are going to be struggling with. We do not want someone else to struggle with it. Any child that seeks help as a result of Lincoln’s legacy is one life that Lincoln saved.”
They hope to help get rid of the stigma around mental health, which prevents kids from reaching out for help when they need it most.
“We felt that was an issue with Lincoln, and we think it was around being made fun of, other kids finding out he was needing support or having mental health struggles that he did not want people to know about,” Rick said.
Rick said the family wants to work with schools and teens to help find ways to support young people when they step up and ask for support.
“What we find is there are a lot of great resources out there to support people to come forward, but perhaps there is a gap between the help and kids wanting to seek the help,” he added.
They said they also wanted to work with coaches in sports to help open up the conversation around men’s mental health.
“The macho man syndrome, I think, is out there that there is a sign of weakness to seek help or to have mental health challenges,” said Rick. “I want to try and get rid of that, to work with men.”