GO PAUL WILSON
One personal journey to make a difference
On Sunday, Matthew Ravida is going for a walk. It’s only five kilometres and he won’t even break a sweat.
But getting to the starting line of the Kids Help Phone annual fundraiser has been a journey that took him to dark and desperate places.
Matthew is 25, grew up in Dundas with parents Joanne and Sam, and big brother, Anthony. There was lots of family all around.
Right from grade-school days, Matthew was an athlete. He decided early on that he wanted to go somewhere with basketball. A university scholarship, maybe play in Europe. Still a kid, he drove himself to succeed.
And then, an event that shook the Ravida house. Anthony, not quite four years older than Matthew, died of a brain aneurysm at 17. That was 11 years ago.
The two brothers were different. No basketball for Anthony — he broke his finger his first time on the court. No, he loved adventure. Scampering up trees, hiking forest trails, climbing mountains.
“He was fearless,” Matthew says. “And he was always protecting me.”
The day his brother died, Matthew didn’t know what to do. While the family talked inside, he shot hoops on the driveway.
Matthew started high school a month later. He put all the feelings away. “I was trying to be a rock for the family.”
But the pressure was there. Now he was the only child. “I felt I needed to do well in my brother’s honour.” Classes, ball practice, weight training, he did it all. Until he couldn’t.
Around the time of that first Christmas without Anthony, Matthew posted on Facebook that he didn’t want to be here anymore. He then tried to take his life with the cord of the blinds in his bedroom. It didn’t work. He went across the street to have dinner at his grandparents’.
But his parents learned of that post, and soon Matthew had been admitted to a psychiatric wing at St. Joseph’s downtown. He was 14, the youngest there, and stayed about a month. He saw things that scared him.
“It was a rude awakening,” he says. “I wanted to get my life together. I started having more dialogue with my parents.” And he sought other help in those days, from the Kids Help Phone.
Matthew graduated from high
school and did get that university basketball scholarship, to York. But there was no elation. “I was completely overwhelmed.”
Around that same time, his parents broke up. Matthew is sure it was linked to his brother’s death. It had been so hard on them all.
At York, Matthew got bad wrist and elbow injuries playing basketball, and eventually was off the team. Classes became a struggle.
“I felt I was letting myself down, and letting down the people who supported me all those years … I sat in my dorm in a fog. I didn’t want to do anything.”
A counsellor at York named Maureen Barnes was there to help. “She’s one of the biggest reasons I was able to graduate. I still talk to her today. She held me accountable, kept me in check.” And though he wasn’t on the court anymore himself, he became kind of a big brother to younger players.
For six years, Matthew has had a girlfriend on his side. Sarah Moore is now a nurse, and Matthew
told her of his struggles at the very beginning.
He graduated with an honours degree in commerce and commutes each day from Dundas to a job as an operations analyst with the Bank of Montreal in Toronto. The bank is a founding partner of Kids Help Phone.
Matthew wanted to be part of the program’s fundraising walk this year. He also wanted to be open about the road he’s travelled. He talked to his senior manager, got immediate encouragement.
His words went out to some 7,000 staffers. (You can click through via the “Donate” button to see his entry at walksokidscantalk.ca.)
“Managers and colleagues came up to me right away,” Matthew says.
Some days the depression is still there, but he knows how to get past it, how to recalibrate.
“My biggest goal now,” he says, “is to make a difference.”