Jade Dulle knows something about an uphill battle.

The 28-year-old Saskatoon woman recently passed through Jasper on her road bike. Her starting point was Prince Rupert, B.C., 1,000 kilometres away. Her endpoint: Newfoundland.

Getting through the Rocky Mountains was tough, but Dulle wasn’t prepared for the long grind that the infamous hill leading to Obed Summit, between Hinton and Edson, would present.

“That hill doesn’t stop,” she said from outside of Edson, on May 22. “It’s an ominous, continuous climb that took me three and a half hours to climb.”

The monolithic Obed ascent—indifferent to her suffering and seemingly never-ending—is an apt metaphor for the greater hill Dulle is climbing: bringing awareness to the shortcomings of Canada’s mental health care systems. 

Having lived with mental health challenges since she was a child, Dulle said when she was 19-years-old she began to experience debilitating symptoms—auditory and visual hallucinations, suicidal ideation and depression. Panicked, she went to the emergency room in her city’s hospital. After 10 gruelling hours, she was told by health care professionals that there was nothing they could do for her.

“I was at a breaking point,” she remembered. “I was at the bottom of a barrel but they still sent me away.”

That pattern kept repeating itself. She went to the emergency room a dozen times while she was obtaining her degree in social work, yet still couldn’t access proper, regulated mental health services.

“I couldn’t get a diagnosis,” she lamented.

Not knowing what else to do, Dulle took her frustration to the open road. She wasn’t a cyclist, but she had always loved biking. With a spontaneous, “shotgun decision,” she made up her mind to bring light to mental health challenges from the seat of her bike. Over the next 1,300 kilometres, she raised $25,000 for the Canadian Mental Health Association. 

That was in 2017, when mental health challenges still carried a lot of stigma. Today’s conversations about mental health are more open, she said, but her story is proof that the systems still need improvement. It took 10 years of living with impairing symptoms before the strong advocacy of a friend finally helped her get a diagnosis and entry into a mental health facility.

But she still had to find the money to pay for her psychotherapy treatment. That’s not good enough, Dulle says. She wants provincial governments to reform their legislation and raise the standards of mental health care. To press her point about the importance of shoring up those resources, she decided to get back on the bike in 2024.

“It’s not that people don’t want to get better; it’s the scarcity of resources that obstruct their path to healing,” Dulle said.

As the Rocky Mountains recede and the prairie landscapes open up in front of her, Dulle will attempt to connect with the communities she rides through. She wants to leverage the collective experiences she learns about along the way to Canada’s east coast. And once again she is raising money for the CMHA. 

When the headwinds intensify, and her body starts to ache, Dulle will remember how she felt when a mental health professional looked her in the eye and told her that the pain she was experiencing wasn’t enough. 

Considering that point in her life, it’s all downhill now.

Support Jade’s Ride for Mental Health by visiting her Donor Drive page.

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com