The board of the River Valley Resilience Retreat. Pictured Left to right: Ramsay Bellisle, Michelle McKeaveney, Chris Garland, Jeff Reeder, Tara Harrison and Dean Blanchard. (Submitted photo/River Valley Resilience Retreat)

By Rob Mahon

River Valley Resilience Retreat

Retreat for first responders hits ground running in opening months

Aug 9, 2022 | 12:00 PM

The idea of the River Valley Resilience Retreat, a safe haven for first responders recovering from trauma or operational stresses, has been in the works for over three years.

Earlier this year, they opened their physical site to great enthusiasm from the community of first responders.

The site sits in the RM of Prince Albert and, according to their website, offers Public Safety Personnel (PSP) a safe place to rest and rejuvenate among their peers. The first three months of operation have gotten off to a good start.

“It’s been huge to be able to have a permanent location that people feel safe coming to,” said Jeff Reeder, co-founder of RVRR. “It’s secluded with access to nature and everything, and everywhere you go on the property it has those healing attributes for what people are looking for.”

Police officers, firefighters, and EMS workers are obvious examples of frontline workers who may need a space to recover, but the retreat has spots for people in all manner of other lines of work as well.

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“We’re a safe place for any public safety personnel, whether it be veterans, police, fire, EMS, corrections, health-care workers, tow truck operators,” Reeder said. “Everybody that’s on the front lines.”

With Prince Albert serving communities far beyond its own city limits, first responders in this area are responsible for a wide swath of territory. As such, having somewhere in their own backyard where they can talk to peers and recover has been a welcome addition.

“It’s been really amazing feedback,” said Reeder. “It’s the first of its kind in the area. Where people traditionally have accessed clinical help and counselors, there’s such a huge backlog in the system and waiting lists. There are other things people can be doing in conjunction with traditional therapies.”

The idea for the RVRR first began to take shape in 2019, but in the years between then and the opening of the centre, the pandemic caused a sharp increase in demand for services related to mental health, especially for first responders.

“In every profession, since COVID, people have been experiencing burnout,” Reeder said. “The lack of resources that everybody has, the people on the frontlines bore the brunt of that. Now we’re recognizing that people need to some preventative maintenance. Just like your physical health, you need to make your mental health a priority as well.”

Reeder added they’re preparing for a golf tournament on Sept. 10 to help raise money for the RVRR.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP