National concert helps address stigma of suicide

Message of World Suicide Prevention Day event is to raise awareness and remove stigma around suicide

Padraig Richards - 13 September 2019

(Edmonton) An important event arising from World Suicide Prevention Day is encouraging and enabling people to talk about suicide-through music.

Conversations about suicide are difficult. The subject is held behind the barricade of stigma. To help bring down those barricades, UAlberta music professor Elizabeth Turnbull established Mysterious Barricades, a day-long concert performed from east to west across Canada, from sunrise to sunset.

Turnbull created Mysterious Barricades after her husband, an Engineering alumnus, was taken by suicide in 2015. Francois Couperin's Les Barricades Mystérieuses was one of his favourite pieces of music.

The concert begins at 6:30 a.m. GMT with the concert at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, and will be live streamed on the Mysterious Barricades website.

The Edmonton segment of the concert is being held September 14 at the University of Alberta's Convocation Hall at 4:30 p.m. local time. Some walk-up tickets are available on a first-come first-serve basis. Concert goers are encouraged to arrive no later than 4:15 p.m. as the livestream starts at 4:30 p.m. sharp. Details of the concert and its performers are here.