Every second Monday, Rod George finds himself in the kitchen at the Fire Pit, cooking something warm for a core group of men who have joined a new wellness group.
George is the elder advisor at Prince George's Dudes Club, one of three northern pilot projects started this year through a partnership with the Men's Depression and Suicide Network at the University of British Columbia.
"It gives men a chance to find someplace real safe to talk about their issues," said George, adding that these services simply don't exist in the same way for men.
The Prince George club gets about eight men each meeting, and as many as 30 have come out since it started in January. It's been difficult getting the word out, but George said he's looking forward to an early October provincial meeting to share ideas for success.
Even so, George said getting regulars to the meetings has been an accomplishment.
"I know we've succeeded here where we've made it safe enough and the people are quite willing to come open up and speaks their hearts and minds without any criticism or judgment or expectation," said George, who works at Positive Living North, which runs the Fire Pit.
It also helps to get them actively committed to something healthy, especially when many live on the street.
"Some have HIV, some of them have legal problems, some of them are brought up on the street and some of them have had horrible accidents that put them out of the workforce," he said, adding many deal with addiction issues.
A doctor from Central Interior Native Health is usually at the meetings to help answer questions, but some of the best moments have been from discussions with the group.
"Sometimes all it takes is for you to hear yourself speak what's bothering you and then you're on the way to healing," he said, adding it can be hard for men. "We just keep everything hidden, totally inside us. We don't speak about it because that would show weakness."
Bill Tooke calls it the John Wayne approach to masculinity.
Tooke is one of the regulars and has attended the group on and off since it was launched this spring.
"Men are not told to be self-reflective," he said, seated in a circle with seven men while George cooked food in the background.
The meetings give him "the sense of moving forward," he said, at a time of his life when he's trying to get himself back together both psychologically and physically.
He struggles with anxiety, depression and sleep apnea, which can make it hard to get things done.
"It's a nice group," said Tooke, adding they share ideas and help build solutions."You're not completely alone."
That peer-based learning is one of the successes of the program, said Dr. Paul Gross, who helped start the Dudes Club model in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside five years ago.
"What we do is create space for men to have a feeling of empowerment, of course to learn about their own health and to share their experiences," he said, adding they speak to men of "taking off your armour."
The program has been extremely successful and the sessions pull in a steady influx of 60 men. This year, the Dudes Club expanded north to new pilot sites in Prince George, Smithers and Moricetown.
Gross said the club offers a new way of understanding wellness.
"Instead of expecting people to come to a doctor's office which is a very sterile, kind of intimidating environment... it's just flipping the paradigm and having us go to the patients and to the community and having them dictate or direct the discussion or the focus of the conversation."
While the traditional doctor office approach of 10-minute visits can work for the vast majority of the population, it doesn't for his clients. Men, too, are less likely than women to visit the doctor.
"(Men) usually go in when the heart stops beating or when the leg's falling off, they won't go in and talk about how that affects their emotions or how they've got issues kind of under the surface that are causing physical manifestations," Gross said. "A big part of the focus is destigmatizing mental health issues around men."
While the Dudes Clubs are open to all men, it also has an indigenous focus and adopts more holistic forms of healing, including the medicine wheel.
"This is a program focused primarily on indigenous men and in order to make sure that's done respectfully but also more effectively it's a question of starting from where they are most comfortable and ... that really strong respect for traditions, natural approaches to health and a wellness perspective that it's quite different from traditional western method of medicine," Gross said.
"There's no question that there's a much higher burden of mental health issues among First Nations men than other male populations."
The Dudes Club runs every second Monday at 6 p.m. at the Fire Pit. For more information call 250-563-6113.
