Two years ago, a group of high schoolers left the bucolic campus of Metchosin’s Pearson College and made their way into Victoria. Walking through the streets of the capital, they quickly witnessed firsthand the ongoing impact of the opioid crisis.
“It's just an extremely apparent problem here,” said student Daniel Melendro. “Back home in Toronto, there's still definitely a problem, but it hadn't been nearly as big an issue as here. It was just really shocking to see it.
“It made me realize that there are a lot of people suffering on the streets, all having very different experiences from me.”
This experience shattered long-held expectations of a city often regarded as one of the best in the country, added student Charvi Gupta, who hails from Alberta.
“Victoria is as a city that's very touristic and usually portrayed as perfect and very beautifully planned,” she said. “But there's a couple streets that are concentrated with people on the street and, to me, that made it seem a lot more fake. I realized that there was an issue that really needed to be addressed.”
On their way back to school that night, this sight still weighed heavily on their minds. That’s when they began brainstorming ways to take action and help the cause.
After reaching out to experts, nonprofits, and advocacy groups, the students kept hearing the same thing – there was a dire need for more human stories from the opioid crisis. This resonated with student Bella Zhou.
“A lot of the media that we had watched surrounding this issue had a lot of stigma because it was portraying the crisis from the lens of people who weren't entirely involved or adjacent to the issue,” she said. “We really wanted to hear from people with lived and living experience.”
After a friend of the group who works as a filmmaker in Vancouver suggested the idea of a ‘community portrait’ documentary, Zhou, Melendro, and Gupta – alongside Ibby Hackwell, Darius Amanat-Markazi, Anna Pavlovska, and David Dokolo – took their cameras, and the project started taking shape.
Zhou saw visual media as the best medium for their project, believing it could capture a person’s history and experience, making the crisis feel personal rather than abstract.
A few weeks later, the high schoolers pitched their idea and received $4,000 in grants from the City of Victoria and Young Aurora. With the funds in hand, the collective began commuting from Metchosin to Victoria after school, during their free time.
Initially expecting it to be much more challenging and anticipating hostility, the group was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly everything went.
“A lot of the people that we met were very open and super insightful,” said Zhou. “They were just really willing to share their experiences.”
Visiting shelters, non-profits and volunteering for Victoria Cool Aid Society, the band of students heard countless “eye-opening” stories from people on the streets along the way.
“Oftentimes it seems [unhoused] people are portrayed as this homogeneous group that goes through the same thing,” said Melendro. “But something I discovered was that everyone goes through something really different.
“Some people opened up to us about their experience with rapes in shelters and how they're never trusting a shelter again, while other people were saying that shelters were the only thing keeping them alive.”
This variety of personal experiences makes homelessness a unique and complex issue, difficult to solve despite the many services and resources available in the city, as Gupta discovered.
“You just realize that it's like not as like simple as it seems,” she said. “It's really hard when there's nothing left to catch you, no safety nets, and how there's just so many cracks in the system.”
“A lot of the people we interviewed come from backgrounds that have a lot less privilege,” added Melendro. “I think there are a lot of systemic forces at play, such as family life, economic background, where you come from, etc.”
Although their age prevented them from accessing key locations, like safe consumption sites reserved for people 19 and older, it ended up being an advantage in connecting with people on the street and support workers.
“I think people felt it was truly lower stakes than if it they were talking to a legitimate news outlet,” said Zhou. “As high schoolers, we put ourselves in a vulnerable place, and I think that it allowed us to have conversations that just flowed more easily.”
After countless trips to and from Victoria, meeting with dozens of people, and filming hours of footage, the young collective is now finalizing what has been two years in the making.
As they prepare to present their 30-minute documentary on April 3, the group reflects on this transformative experience that reshaped their outlook on the opioid crisis.
“The biggest thing I've learned was how much power I actually had to make some place feel like home by… talking to folks and provide them an outlet to express themselves and share their emotions,” said Zhou.
Starting the project with little knowledge of how to make an impact, the students now hope their work will inspire change and encourage others to engage in understanding and improving their community.
“I want people to confront [this issue] head-on and actually see the humans that comprise this conflict,” said Zhou.
“I hope this will inspire some movement in other places with the same issue,” said Gupta. “It would be great to see documentaries made in other cities across Canada… and see that comparison.”
The documentary will be presented on April 3 at The Mint (1414 Douglas St.), from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
To learn more about the project, visit
