I believe real change begins when we stop running from uncomfortable truths.

For me, that moment came on August 3, 2011, when my actions resulted in the death of Daniel Levesque. I pled guilty to manslaughter. I served my time. But true accountability doesn't begin when a sentence ends — it begins when the excuses stop.

That experience stripped away every illusion I had about myself and forced me to confront what real responsibility looks like. Not the kind you manufacture in your head to feel better about yourself, but the kind that rebuilds you from the ground up. The kind that demands you transform your pain into purpose so others don't have to inherit the consequences of systems we know are failing.

From that place of brutal honesty, I write.

I write about the systems that continue to abandon far too many Canadians when they need them most. A mental health apparatus that treats crises instead of preventing them. A justice system that warehouses human beings instead of addressing root causes. A culture of willful blindness that lets us pretend these failures are abstractions instead of tragedies waiting to happen in our own communities.

We all know the truth: if we see it and stay silent, we're complicit.

Every one of us has a choice — to speak up, to act, to refuse to look away when it's easier to pretend someone else will handle what we all know needs fixing.

True accountability demands more than confronting the past. It requires a lifetime commitment to doing better — not to balance scales that can never be balanced, not to seek absolution, but because it's the only thing left worth doing.

For me the last few years, that work has taken many forms: delivering thousands of school lunches to families struggling to make ends meet, organizing winter clothing drives for those who would go cold without, advocating for seniors facing food insecurity and isolation. It's not redemption — that's not mine to claim. It's obligation.

I write because I've witnessed firsthand what happens when we don't confront hard truths about ourselves and our institutions. People suffer. Families shatter. Communities fracture. Systems rot from within while we convince ourselves that someone else will step up to do what we're all responsible for.

But I've also seen what becomes possible when we stop making excuses and start demanding change.

When we hold ourselves and our leaders accountable for building something better because we refuse to accept that preventable harm is inevitable.

When we understand that our comfort with the status quo comes at the expense of someone else's safety, dignity, or life.

This work is uncomfortable by design. The moment we get comfortable with injustice is the moment we stop deserving the second chances we've been granted.

If you're ready to confront what we've all been avoiding — starting with the hardest truths about ourselves and the systems we've allowed to persist — then this is where transformation begins.

Not with easy answers or false comfort.

With responsibility. With action. With the recognition that every day we delay this work is another day someone doesn't get the help they need.

The truth isn't comfortable. But it's waiting.

And so is our obligation to do something meaningful with it.