A travelling display with 645 candles will be coming to the downtown Kamloops library at 5th and Victoria next month.

Each candle represents a person who has died due to an illicit drug overdose in the Interior Health area between January 2016 and December 2018.

Interior Health Mental Health and Substance Use Practice Lead Jessica Mensinger says they are hoping the display will keep the impact of the crisis in the forefront.

“Everybody in our community is impacted by this crisis and everybody plays a role in the conversations,” she said. “There will be opportunities to leave a message if you choose to do so.”

“This overdose crisis is a personal issue for a lot of people, so we suspect that people will want the opportunity to respond.”

In the Kamloops area – which includes Kamloops, Chase, Logan Lake, Barriere, and Sun Peaks – there were 141 overdose deaths in the three years, 52 of those in 2018 alone.

“Each candle represents somebody’s friend and somebody’s family member, somebody who is missed every single day,” Mensinger added. “We’re really hoping that it will keep the impact of the overdose crisis at the forefront of our communities dialogue.”

“Hopefully, it will spark further conversation about how we are responding to the overdose crisis and the public health emergency.”

The display will be in Kamloops from April 22 to 28.

It will also visit Vernon, Penticton, and Kelowna, the other communities most affected by the crisis.

(Picture: pixabay, for representation only)