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With an amazing team of artists, in 2024 -25 I somewhat accidentally made a series of short animated documentary films.

When my daughter Sophie died in 2020, someone exclaimed to me, “Fentanyl? But that’s something in the news!” Since that day, I have been trying to communicate in various ways that the toxic drug crisis is not something happening to other people. It is happening to all of us, and will impact all of us, including future generations.

In 2024, I began a project to collect and share a few of the stories of the young people who are no longer here. My goal was to emphasize the lives these young people lived – however brief – not their cause of death, which so often dominates the narrative. 

I began with a story about Sophie’s love of theatre then interviewed ten more mothers from all over Ontario to learn about their children. All the written stories are available here to download, print and share without restriction.

As I was writing, I began to feel that the stories would lend themselves beautifully to film. Thus began an inspired collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Jessica Hiemstra. I narrated the stories and gave Jessica the audio recordings to work with. I was stunned by the beautiful stop-motion animation she created. We had to keep going, bringing the talented video editor Lucy Silversides on board. Lucy’s work received a nomination in the best editing category at TO WebFest. The shorts needed music, and Eve Goldberg offered just the right composition, which was also nominated for best original score.

Each video offers a glimpse into the life of someone under 30 who was killed by fentanyl between 2019 and 2023. You can watch them singly – they are each just a few minutes long – or watch the compilation of all ten (but take care – it’s a lot of loss to process). This project has been a labour of true love and I can’t thank my creative team enough for their contributions.

CBC Superior Morning interviewed Susan Tilson and me on June 3 about her son Zach, who is featured in one of the videos. You can listen here. The series was also mentioned in this August 2025 Toronto Star article about the latest welcome dip in fatalities, as a reminder of the enormous human cost already paid.

At TO WebFest in September 2025, I was completely surprised to win an award for the series.

Some stories are born from a deeply personal place: shaped by love, resilience, and the desire to create meaning from life’s hardest moments. The Legacy Light Award, presented by WebSeries Canada, honors a creator who transformed personal experience into a powerful, heartfelt series that reminds us all of the strength of storytelling. Mary’s work is a tribute – not just to creativity, but to legacy, healing, and light.

Sophie’s film was selected to screen at the Voices Rising Film Festival in Brooklyn, NY on November 8, 2025, where it won Best Documentary. You can see it here and it’s now on the YouTube channel as well. Then in early December, it won an Award of Distinction from the Canadian and International Short Film Festival. All of these accolades have been a surprising and moving acknowledgement that these memories matter – that our children mattered.

You can keep a little piece of the project by ordering a print or calendar created by Jessica Hiemstra from the animations used in the films. A portion of proceeds will support Street Health with their frontline harm reduction work in Toronto. Here’s a quote from Jessica:

Art can do many things – but one of my favourite things that it does and inspires, is listening. Mary listenened to each of the families of each of the kids who died, and then I listened to the transcripts. Each of these people became fuller people. I went from knowing they existed to loving them. Now all these people are part of my story. “

There is a further phase to this project, which includes the stories of people killed by opioids across Canada as well as people killed by AIDS in its initial devastating wave roughly three decades ago. The response to both healthcare crises has been too little too late, for reasons that bear obvious similarities. During the peak years of the AIDS crisis in Canada, about 10,000 people died and we collectively felt the impact of such a staggering loss inside one generation. The opioid crisis has so far claimed five times that number. This project is about remembering who is missing and reflecting on what that means for the rest of us.

The first story published from this series is available to read online at Wayves, Atlantic Canada’s queer magazine. It tells the story of Stuart Hickox, whose life could not have been more deeply impacted when his relative Allan Hickox died of AIDS in PEI in 1987. I am continuing to work on the collection.

Thanks to the following funders for their generous support of the research and writing for this project.