Mother of overdose victim says merchandise for Saskatoon consumption site brought unexpected emotions

The first time Marie Agioritis saw a specially made blanket that bore an image of her son Kelly Best, the emotional walls she had built since his overdose death came down.

"Sometimes it's like a locked door with a waterfall behind it," Agioritis said. "I try not to open it up too much because I still have to function."

The design is one of five in a tarot card-themed merchandise fundraising effort by Saskatoon's Prairie Harm Reduction that launched earlier this month.

Prairie Harm Reduction runs the only supervised consumption site in Saskatchewan and has received no provincial funding to support its operations.

The merchandise is crucial to fundraising, said the group's executive director Jason Mercredi, but it's also intentionally provocative and driven partly by a sense of anger over what he says is complete inaction from the province.

"All we're asking is for the health authority to get involved, get active and be completely transparent with what's going on," Mecredi said. "They're not even updating the public in terms of how many overdoses are taking place in the community anymore."

The following are descriptions of the five tarot card designs, told in the words of the designers, Agioritis and Mercredi. The transcripts have been edited for clarity and length.

Judgement card

Marie Agioritis, mother of Kelly Best

Jason contacted me a couple of months back and said, 'Hey, listen, we are looking to use an image of an angel and we wonder if you mind if we used Kelly face on it.' I said 'Absolutely, I don't mind whatsoever.'

But, you know, when he told me that, I didn't know what he meant. Coffee cups or, you know, pens. I really didn't understand the real significance of it. 

Isaac Thomas, graphic artist

We have Kelly, the angel who's giving naloxone kits judgment for the people of Saskatchewan that are rising from the dead, from a wheatfield. 

Marie Agioritis

[Mercredi] stopped by and he presented me with that blanket and it was sort of one of those moments that I don't even think he understood the significance of it. It clicked a memory of when my son died. He died on our living room sofa and he had his own blanket over top of him. I think of the blanket as something so significant to his dying. 

After he died, I took that blanket and I wouldn't wash it. I used it on the couch and I wrapped myself in it for months after until my family couldn't handle the fact that it was so dirty. So I had to wash it.

To have a blanket, when I sat down on that spot, it came to me that I've got Kelly back. I've got his blanket back. It represents so much more than just some fundraising.

A lot of us as parents, and our kids, have given so much to try to turn things around. There's significant moments in the last five years that mean a ton, and this is one of those days.

Death Card

Jason Mercredi, Prairie Harm Reduction

We say right now we don't have a health plan for addictions, we have a death plan.

There's a quote out of the Book of Revelations, "And Behold the Pale Horse." So we have death riding in on a white caribou. A very cowboy-looking death.

Underneath him is somebody dead in a suit. That's because we have a lot of people, white collar folks, dying of addictions, not a street level population. And then we have two community members providing people with naloxone and stopping death in their tracks.

Justice Card

Brooklyn Carriere, graphic designer

As the vision for the graphic was being pitched, I was already piecing it together in my head and I was excited to do it. I was definitely seeing the red hand that you see in a lot of missing and murdered Indigenous women art in the general style of tarot and I was picturing a strong-looking woman.

I'm happy I get to spread awareness about issues like this and use art to tell that story.

Tower Card

Isaac Thomas, Gladline Graphic Design

This one has people flying out of a tower on fire. When you get that card, it's kind of like, 'Oh, you're doing away with your old ways of doing things.'

I was leery about doing an elevator on fire, just because I think it can be perceived as we're anti-farming or something, but it's mostly just using a classic statue and imagery. 

Jason Mercredi

We don't believe in abstinence-based education. We believe in harm reduction education. We should be giving kids tools and people tools so they can make informed decisions and they can be as safe as possible.

The other one we help is 'not in my backyard.' We think that not in my backyard mentality has got to go. We're not fans of it. We think a lot of it is based on racism and discrimination, classism, colonialism, and it doesn't have any place in our community.

Hermit Card

Jason Mercredi

The most at-risk category for people overdosing is those who use drugs alone. It's really common that we have people dying alone in their washrooms because they don't want to die alone at their home, because there's so much shame and stigma around them, around addictions.

So we we did a design with Chris Morin, a local artist, that is a little bit more cartoony, perhaps a bit brighter in its colours. It's a friendly image. And so we want to take away the stigma around drug use.