Beloved social worker mourned

Christal Capostinsky, a well known Prince George social worker, died recently at 45, after a lengthy illness.

Those in the community will remember Capostinsky best for her commitment to helping those most vulnerable in society.

“The last couple of weeks have been really hard,” Shelly LeBreton, a longtime friend who is a local social worker, said about Capostinsky’s passing. LeBreton offers endof-life care in her social work practice.

Capostinsky was still in Alberta and so she and LeBreton communicated over the phone and used Facetime.

LeBreton and Capostinsky studied social work together in Prince George and came up with creative ways to earn enough to help pay for their educations as a team, LeBreton explained.

During her younger years, Capostinsky struggled with addiction that led her to a life as a sex trade worker. During her remarkable recovery, Capostinsky’s determination to better herself resulted in her getting her education to become a social worker, while overcoming many societal and financial barriers. Capostinsky ultimately earned her masters in social work degree in 2008 from UNBC.

“For Christal it was all about helping women overcome their circumstances like she did,” LeBreton said.

The legacy Capostinsky has left includes her work on the board of the Northern

Women’s Information Centre between 2004 and 2007 while being a peer support worker with Positive Living North. Capostinsky founded the New Hope Society, which she created when she was a social work student earning her diploma at the College of New Caledonia in 2005. New Hope Society is the only sex worker support organization in northern BC. New Hope Society’s mandate is to identify and address barriers to access supports and services that marginalized women, both adults and youth, face while working in the sex industry.

While Capostinsky was on her mission of providing continued support to vulnerable women, she earned many honours, including the Bridget Moran Advancement of Social Work Award and the Governor

General’s Award for the sensitivity training she provided to the RCMP on how to deal respectfully with sex workers.

After earning her masters of social work at UNBC, Capostinsky was the Pacific representative for the Canadian AIDS Society while she worked full time as a child protection officer for the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

Capostinsky moved to Alberta with her teenage son in 2015 to be closer to family and she was employed as a family interventionist with the Family Centre of Northern Alberta.

LeBreton created a gofundme page for a bursary of $5,000 for a social work student at the university called the Christal Capostinsky Social Work Bursary.