Charlene Vacon, Regional Director, Quebec

I'm Charlene Vacon and I'm an advocate for drug legalization and harm reduction. I live in the Montreal suburbs with my family and work in both Quebec and Ontario.

My first-born son, Archie, wanted to be an anesthesiologist when he was a kid. He set about learning all about opiates and at twelve years old, Archie was able to draw representations of fentanyl, carfentanyl, morphine and other opioids, and to tell you what their potency was. I knew a little about morphine and fentanyl from my time learning to be a paramedic. Archie would sometimes come with me to practice, hearing about the many ways the body can fail and what emergency medical services can do to help. But, when it came to the molecules and what they do, Archie outstripped me there like he came to do in chess, philosophy, geography, languages, politics, and on and on!

Archie since changed his mind about what his career would be. Happily, he was accepted to study in a bunch of university programs and chose Industrial Engineering at Montreal’s Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science at Concordia University, my alma mater, for this fall after graduating in science this spring from John Abbott College. (Yes, I’m a proud mama!)

Teachers often told us when Archie was in grade school that he was very bright. His book-smarts were confirmed when he won the Principal’s Award at the end of grade 6 as the top male student that year. But, we worried in those years that he had a hard time making friends. We wanted Archie to be happy and we thought having more people his age in his life should be part of that.

Then in junior high school, Archie’s social circle exploded. Archie got in with a smart, curious and fun group of kids in an innovative program for bright kids called the Matrix at Westwood Junior High School in the suburbs where we live – and suddenly he had so many friends.

Through high school, his friends echoed what his teachers said: Archie was the smartest person they’d ever met. Archie’s appetite for knowledge and learning were voracious. Our dinner table conversations were more like lectures from Archie’s most recent ideas on genetics, the virtues, calculus, social democracy, antiquity or the many other subjects that he’d devoted his time to understanding. We saw that he was able not just to remember facts, but to synthesize ideas and develop an ethics for his own life that included thoughtful debate in vibrant socializing.