Phinney legacy fund gains momentum

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This article was published 06/10/2022 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mark Phinney says he and other like-minded people want some good to come out of his twin brother’s suicide with a legacy fund geared toward supporting construction workers.

This is why they created the Phinney Legacy Fund, in honour of Scott Phinney. The fund is in its infancy, Mark Phinney said, but it’s been well received so far, and plans to expand are underway.

The legacy fund was established shortly after Scott, who worked at CW2 Construction, died by suicide in 2019.

It’s still in the planning stages and currently entails an annual golf tournament and most recently, a line of locally made merchandise people can purchase online. Items include travel mugs, ball caps, golf shirts and hoodies sporting the Phinney Legacy Fund logo, a sketch by Phinney of his brother’s hard hat.

The main goal of the legacy fund is to provide financial help to people in the industry without any barriers or red tape so they can afford the care they need.

“For me, personally, I didn’t want Scott being remembered as the guy who took his life.

“So we tried to think of a way we could reframe the conversation. I talked about this to Tanya because she worked there when he died, and we both took this on to create a benevolent fund to help the industry normalize talking about [mental health] and reach out to those in it who are struggling,” Phinney said, referring to Tanya LaBuick, chief operating officer of CW2 Construction.

The construction industry still has a culture of toughness, especially for men, he said. The men in the industry are still pressured into holding back their feelings and quietly dealing with any stress in their lives without help.

Another segment of the legacy fund’s vision is creating a strategy focused on increasing mental health awareness in the construction industry.

They are looking at creating some training modules that can be delivered to different companies. Phinney’s goal is to see something similar added to the core certification process for physical health and safety, but for mental health awareness and suicide prevention strategies.

People would be trained and given resources so they can identify anyone who may be struggling in the workplace and help them get the assistance they need, as well as help individuals identify when they need support and where they can find it.

Currently, most suicide and mental health awareness training is up to the individual, Phinney said.

“This isn’t comfortable for me to talk about, not comfortable for anyone to talk about. But if we do, we can have that conversation and start normalizing it.”

Scott’s death highlights the high suicide rate in the construction industry, LaBuick said. Along with the pressure to “suck it up” and suppress their emotions, workers often can’t afford to take time off work to deal with mental health struggles. If they are not working, they are not earning money to support themselves or their families, creating a vicious cycle.

To honour Scott, they started the legacy fund to help fellow construction workers who may not have access to health-care plans through company benefits.

“What we saw firsthand was Scott had rent to pay, a cat he loved, so he could not go into care because if he wasn’t working, he wasn’t earning, and he had no one to look after his cat,” LaBuick said. “Those can be barriers, so part of the money will be benevolent, and we will offer it to pay for costs so people can go and actually get the care that they need.”

Those factors are fuelling a suicide crisis in the construction industry, she said. With only U.S. statistics available, LaBuick said the industry has one of the highest rates of suicide of any sector, with 53.2 suicides per 100,000 workers. Men make up the majority of suicide deaths in the industry. While this is American data, she said, it’s easy to assume a similar rate for Canadian construction workers.

There are tentative plans to have a marketing strategy and a website with links on CW2 Construction and Guardian Fencing’s website by the end of this year or early next year.

Merchandise can be found at phinneyslegacy.itemorder.com/shop/category/190967/.

» kmckinley@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @karenleighmcki1