Elizabeth Grant and Julia Bresalier met on a rock face years before they ever talked about mental health. But when the two reconnected in Squamish, their different worlds, Grant in healthcare and Bresalier in community social services, kept pointing them toward the same problem, for a huge swath of Squamish residents, affordable mental health support was inaccessible.
Their shared vision became the Tantalus Wellspring Society, a Squamish-based registered charity built specifically to fill the gap. The organization is now asking the community to help shape what comes next through a survey on preferred programming.
“If you didn’t have a good high-paying government job with benefits or weren’t on social assistance, you couldn’t afford counselling,” Grant said. “Or even going to a yoga class or a meditation class. Everything costs so much money, and it’s only inflated over the years.”
Bresalier put the problem in structural terms.
“There’s this whole middle, more than half the population, that can’t access services. They don’t meet the mandate for publicly funded services because they’re not in a dire enough state,” said Bresalier. “We really wanted to help make sure that people didn’t have to get to that state first.”
The two spent years building toward a solution. They ran free and sliding-scale community workshops on everything from trail running and stand-up paddleboarding to mindfulness, effective communication, and Indigenous teachings of the land. Getting their registered charity status, which finally arrived in early 2020 just as COVID hit, took years of community needs assessments, values discussions, and grant applications. Their workshops moved online during the pandemic, and the organization came out the other side with the funding base to launch their main subsidized counselling program.
That program, called Empowerment and Choice, has now been running for three years beyond its initial pilot. It covers up to five counselling sessions per client, reimbursing up to $140 per individual session and $165 for couples or families, roughly $700 in full coverage for an individual. If a therapist recommends continued support and funds are available, clients can access three additional sessions. There is no income testing. The intake questionnaire doesn’t even require a full name.
“We take people at face value,” Bresalier said. “If somebody says they need 100% support, they get 100% support. We ask people to contribute what they can, and so far that’s worked really well.”
The name of the program reflects a philosophy at the heart of everything Tantalus Wellspring does. Oftentimes, in publicly funded systems, Bresalier noted, you only get the counsellor you’re assigned, even if it’s not a good fit. Empowerment and Choice was designed so that clients pick their own therapist from a network of local practitioners who have agreed to slightly reduced rates.
The organization’s other stream, the Collaboration Project, continues to run community workshops. Most recently, a women’s wellness series on perimenopause and menopause ran on Monday nights in November, in partnership with Fall Line Fitness. The series brought together a physician, a dietician, and a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner alongside strength training sessions. It sold out almost immediately, and the team hopes to run it again.
Funding comes from a patchwork of grants, foundation support, and private donors. The Squamish Community Foundation, Whistler Community Foundation, and 100 Women Who Care have all contributed, as have corporate partners like Carbon Engineering and Coastal Design Contracting. A matching campaign led by local supporter Greg Gardner has been particularly effective at motivating more people to donate.
The organization is run entirely by volunteers, all of whom have full time jobs and families alongside their board commitments. They are now looking to grow and are actively welcoming new volunteers and board members. No specialized background is required.
Squamish residents are welcome to share their input on what wellness programming they want to see through their community survey. Those interested in applying for counselling support, donating, or getting involved can find more information on the Tantalus Wellspring Society website. Charitable tax receipts are issued for all donations over $20.
