In September 2015, a 22-year-old named Lindsey More died by suicide. She had been close friends with Mark Jones's daughter. She had spent time in his home. And when she was gone, Mark, a former teacher and principal with 35 years in public education, decided he had to do something.
What followed was seven years of coalition building, fundraising, institutional battles, and refusing to stop. On May 16, 2024, he stood at the grand opening of the Sheldon Kennedy Centre of Excellence in Red Deer, a 66,000 square foot, three-storey building on Red Deer Polytechnic's campus, now being called a North American first in integrated child advocacy and youth mental health services. The second floor is named the Lindsey More Youth Mental Health and Addiction Hub.
This is not a story about a building. It's a story about what grief becomes when someone decides not to let it stop at grief.
Andrew sits down with Mark Jones, CEO of the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre, to talk about what it actually cost to build something this ambitious, what most people still get wrong about child abuse, what happens when a child walks through the doors of the CACAC, and the question nobody has publicly asked him: what it was like to keep building when Sheldon Kennedy temporarily removed his name from the project.
In 2023 alone, the CACAC conducted 400 forensic interviews. That number says something about what's happening in Central Alberta and about what Mark Jones refused to look away from.
Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.
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