Suck it up, don’t be a sissy, be strong, be tough are all phrases repeated to many boys, making it harder for them to express or share their emotions by the time they become men, Dare to be Vulnerable Project founder Susan Blain said Thursday during a panel discussion featuring five Ottawa businessmen courageously talking about a subject guys don’t often talk about: their mental health.
“I say BS,” she said dismissively of the misplaced mentality that boys should never cry. “To suppress that is so dangerous.”
She was speaking at Bayview Yards, home of economic development agency Invest Ottawa. “I never thought I’d be standing in front of a group and that I would talk about men as being a marginalized group. But you are [marginalized] when it comes to this.”
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The panelists were: Kevin Ford, CEO of Calian Group; Jody Burton, CEO of IT solutions provider Stoneworks Technologies; Rob Imbeault, co-founder of vertical mushroom farming network Adapt AgTech; James Ciesielski, co-founder and CTO of cloud backup and recovery software company Rewind; and Stephen Beckta, owner of the Beckta group of restaurants. They’re also sons, fathers, husbands and brothers.
The crowd of more than 100 attendees was welcomed by Michael Tremblay, president and CEO of Invest Ottawa. As a baby boomer, he was “pretty much raised and brought up to suffer in silence when anything difficult was happening around me, because anything else would be a sign of weakness.”
Tremblay dared to be vulnerable that morning. There was a “dark period” much earlier in his career, when his constant work-related travel left him feeling detached and alone (think George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air). “I found a way through it. Not everyone does. Not everyone does.”
Of the roughly 4,000 suicide deaths in Canada each year, close to 75 per cent are men, according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada.
Tremblay spoke about how important good mental health is to Invest Ottawa, which works closely with burgeoning tech leaders, some of whom are facing challenging times with layoffs, rising interest rates and more cautious investors. “There’s a lot going on; there’s a lot to think about, so that’s why we care about it here.”
Ford was “on board, from day one” after being asked to participate in the Dare to be Vulnerable Project. It’s “overdue,” he said of Blain’s efforts to get more local leaders openly sharing their personal struggles with their mental health.
The former Ottawa CEO of the Year lost both a dad and brother-in-law to suicide, and has a sister who struggles with depression. He spoke about the importance of talking openly about mental health so that people never feel shame in asking for help.
He was also very candid in sharing how he used to suffer anxiety attacks prior to public speaking, until he sought professional help to identify his common triggers and to come up with coping mechanisms.
Calian, which is a publicly traded Ottawa-based company, is a provider of business and technology services in the areas of health, IT, learning and advanced technologies, with clients in industry and government, as well as worldwide. It’s on track to become a one-billion-dollar global company.
The room heard how Burton was diagnosed five or six years ago with bipolar disorder. “It was one of the toughest periods in my life,” said Burton, who initially hid it from colleagues before making them part of his support system.
“I had always taken such great personal pride in being that guy that could find answers, and being that guy that could find a solution to almost anything,” said Burton. “I was always up to that challenge, and this just wasn’t a challenge I could overcome on my own.”
Imbeault used writing as a form of therapy to help him process a severe childhood trauma. The co-founder of Assent was so skilled at putting words to paper that he penned the best-selling Before I Leave You: A Memoir on Suicide, Addiction and Healing. The worthwhile read details his five-year suicidal drug and alcohol binge. Imbeault is now a family man, with a wife and young kids, on a mission to advance access to sustainable food supplies.
Beckta learned about mental illness at a young age by having a single mom who suffered from wild manic episodes due to bipolar disorder. He described his own mental health as generally “pretty good”.
“Happiness is the delta between your expectations and reality,” said Beckta. “Because my expectations were always modest, I found I could be happy almost all the time, which is great.”
The pandemic really threw Beckta for a loop, however. He went from never laying anybody off in the combined 45-year history of his three restaurants to suddenly and unexpectedly letting 140 staff go.
“My self-worth was wrapped around how we care for our people,” said Beckta. “That got shattered in a day. How do you recover from that? It was really tough.”
Beckta said he hid his pain by participating in calming hobbies to keep himself focused on the present, rather than worrying about the future or getting depressed about what had already happened. As well, he and business partner Clay Cardillo committed themselves to being “the best un-employer we could be” by delivering care packages to furloughed staff. His fine dining meal and wine kits, Curated by Beckta, were also borne out of the pandemic.
The closest any of the men got to crying was when a teary-eyed Ciesielski talked about his struggle with ‘imposter syndrome’. It’s a condition of feeling anxious or in persistent self-doubt, despite being high-performing in external and objective ways. “You’re expected to know all the answers, be the rock, be the one who people can go to if they have questions,” said Ciesielski, who sought tools to help him get over his mental block.
The business leaders also shared ways they maintain good mental health, including their use of humour, meditation, gratitude and such morning rituals as making the bed or self-imposed smiles. Maintaining work-life balance and being present for others is also important, said Burton. “Conversations such as these, the fact that we all get to communicate and share some of the challenges that we have in life, I find that that helps myself and, hopefully, helps other people in life as well.”
The panelists received a standing ovation from the audience after speaking about the mental health issues that they had overcome. It was also nice to see them ditch the fist bumps and high fives in favour of hugs.
caroline@obj.ca
