Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
Corbin Holmes-Smillie is on a mission to shed light on the damages the ongoing opioid crisis causes not only to the addicts, but their families as well.
The 13-year-old native of Napanee knows it all too well, as one of his guardians is currently in jail as a direct result of an addiction, leaving him and his brothers in the care of his grandmother. He’ll have a chance to speak to Ottawa’s House of Commons about the issue, after having won an essay writing contest, hosted by EF Tours.
The contest called upon students to submit a paragraph about their idea to make their community a better place. Along with the trip to Ottawa, he also won a trip to the Dominican Republic, where he’ll have the opportunity to better a local community.
He entered the contest on the advice of his grandmother, Colleen Holmes.
“We thought it’d be good if people knew about (the opioid crisis) and raised awareness about it,” said Holmes-Smillie. “Her and I sat in the living room for a couple of hours just talking about it and writing it word for word and just brainstorming ideas how I thought we could help the community with this epidemic.”
Holmes-Smillie considers himself lucky in that he had a grandmother who was able to take him in. He knows of a lot of kids in a similar situation who have been placed in foster homes and separated from their siblings.
“It destroys families,” said Holmes, who was gearing up for retirement four years ago before she became a legal guardian to four boys. “All of them, not just the addict’s (life). We need to get people the help they need and deserve. They’re not bad people.”
Just 10 years old when his guardian was arrested, Holmes-Smillie had a hard time dealing with it, both with missing school and struggling to focus when he was there. Since then he’s shown vast improvements in his grades, which was another factor when EF Tours selected him as one of the recipients of the service learning trip.
Holmes-Smillie will spend the next week in the Dominican Republic, teaching English to fellow students, painting schools and cleaning the community as part of an EF Tour’s Service Learning Tour.
“Going to a third world country and seeing how people live and just understanding, I’ve never really thought of that,” he said of his service learning tour. “(I’m looking forward to) just experiencing what they live like and just meeting new people.”
The trip was particularly an exciting one for him as he’d never been out of the country beforehand.
The second part of being selected by EF Tours includes the opportunity to actually put his writing into action. From May 26-29 he’ll be in Ottawa to speak at the House of Commons.
“(The goal is) to at least make it so it can be spread a little across the province, in schools” he said of his goal for speaking to the government. “Starting out with just a little bit of awareness, and letting families know there is help and people can get help to combat the addiction they have.”
He’s hoping to get the ball rolling to encourage the government to make it more difficult for pharmacists to give out opioids as well as to focus on getting help for those who get caught up in addiction and not strictly punishing them for crimes they commit to help feed that addiction.
“It’s not just for the competition (with EF Tours),” he said of speaking up about his experiences. “It’s something that needs to be seen. It needs to be dealt with.”