When Ken died in February 2021, we had an outpouring of messages from readers, with many telling us how much his columns meant to them. In light of that, we thought we would go back through our files and re-publish some of them. Ken would be flattered by the kind words readers expressed. We miss him as a friend and as a storyteller.

If he would have lived, what would he be doing today? He would have seen his daughters graduate. He would have walked two of them down the aisle, and he would have been there to see his first grandchild. Instead, he walked to an isolated area, his favourite fishing spot, with a bottle of pills and decided his life would end. lt’s been over 20 years since my youngest brother committed suicide. When I first heard he went missing, I wasn’t worried because he was known to take off but only for a few days. He would return to his wife and four daughters. But now he was gone for a couple of weeks and without saying a word to anyone.

Generally, when he was going through a hard time, he would phone me. Most times, it was a brother-to-brother talk with words of encouragement. Logan was a loner who spent any extra time fishing by himself. He never spoke of his childhood. He was another family member taken from my mother during the notorious years of First Nation children being placed in international foster homes. These were known as “The Scoop” years and were totally government sanctioned. After a month, there was still no word from my brother. I started to ask myself where he would go. Once he told me he had a dream of going fishing at Lesser Slave Lake in the North West Territories.

It crossed my mind to book a flight to the NWT, but my mind kept saying he was close to home. Everyone in the town where he lived was out looking for Logan. Everyone in town knew him. He was nicknamed “The Mongolian” mostly because of his size. He was a huge man at over sixfeet-four and almost 300 pounds. To complete the image of his nickname, his hair went down to his lower back. He rarely smiled, never mind laughing. Even at Christmas or Thanksgiving family gatherings, he would mostly sit by himself. After a while, it was accepted he would rather be left alone. Very few people knew about his favourite spot, but my stepdad was one who did. He decided to check and there he found Logan with an empty bottle of pills and a letter in his hand.

It took considerable energy to find this fishing area. There were deep ditches, ruts and thick bushes to walk through. There would have been plenty of time to change his mind, but it looked like he was set on what he was going to do. Of course, no one took the news harder than my mother, who still had her hopes up. At the time, I was living off the Broadway area of Saskatoon. When I received the phone call that my brother’s body was found, I went for a walk. There’s a bench high on the banks of the south side of the river, facing west.

I used to enjoy sitting on that bench and watching the sunset. Like most Saskatchewan sunsets, I would admire the canvas the Creator was crafting. However, that evening there was no sunset. Even though it was still an early autumn evening it was almost completely dark. All I could see were the dark rolling clouds heading towards the city. I sat there and asked myself “why?” I thought about my mom, Logan’s wife and daughters. I thought about what a selfish act suicide is. For some reason, I kept saying he didn’t care. No thought was given to the family, his wife and children. But that still didn’t answer the “why” question.

In his suicide letter, Logan mentioned he couldn’t live with the pain any longer and apologized to everyone. I couldn’t recall anything being mentioned about pain. I talked with his wife and found out about all the medication he was taking. All the pills were for depression and mental illness. She told me about the horrible upbringing he had at some homes he was placed in. I started to understand his pain but still wouldn’t accept suicide was a way to deal with it. Today, I still think about him all the time. I think about what he would be doing if he would have lived. In some way, he still lives within me because sometimes I’ll be driving down a street and I’ll see someone that looks like him or walks like him. Then reality hits home. He is never coming back. When I hear about the high suicide rate with Indigenous people, I think about my brother. When I heard about four girls taking their lives in Northern Saskatchewan in less than a month, I think about the pain Logan wrote in his letter.

There are many people who have endured incredible journeys, many filled with pain beyond description, yet they continue to focus on how precious life is. Those are the people who reached out for help from those who understand. My brother never reached out. That would be the only advice this older brother can give: Never give up, but reach out. That’s what I would say if he would have lived.

-Ken Noskye