Joseph Boyden, Richard Wagamese talk mental health in Thunder Bay

About 400 people packed a Thunder Bay hotel ballroom Wednesday night to hear two award-winning Canadian authors share their stories of living with mental illness.

Joseph Boyden and Richard Wagamese were guest speakers at The Fine Print: Writers Talk Mental Health, a fundraiser organized by the city's chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

• Joseph Boyden to share story of depression

Wagamese spoke about his experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder. He explained how he was taken from his birth family, abused, and ending up on the streets.

" I was part of the 60s scoop," he said.

"I was transplanted out of northwestern Ontario and grafted onto a family, a non-native family, in the suburbs of Toronto and that was the start of seven years of almost ritualistic abuse," said Wagamese.

Wagamese credited the help he received from a group of Ojibwa elders, during a traditional camping trip, with turning his life around.

He said one of the older men told him he carried the gift of storytelling.

"They gave me the principles of oral storytelling and it was like they took a big brown thumb, put it under my chin, and lifted my head up and I could look at people because suddenly I was something. I was Ojibwa," said Wagamese.

Boyden also related how storytelling helped him emerge from depression in 2008.

He said he should have been very happy, since he had just won the Giller Prize.

Instead, he was weighed down by grief, after learning that the children of several friends had died by suicide.

Boyden himself attempted suicide as a teenager.

He said his wife Amanda offered these encouraging words to write about his own feelings, and experiences as a way of helping others:

"Write about it Joseph. Speak out loud. Not for yourself, but for these kids. If one kid hears this message it will make a difference."