Meet Glenn Petersen

Our catchment area is from Huntsville, up past Kapuskasing, with the exception of the Sudbury and Timmins area. Though our nurses do cover for Timmins with the actual treatment of Hep C.
I guess they saw some things in me that maybe I wasn’t recognizing at the time. And I was afforded every opportunity to do training or anything. I had some very good people above me that, you know, afforded me the chances to do anything that was going on in the office. And that included going out on some of the road trips with the staff at various functions. And a lot of different things, you know. And they knew from the fact that I was volunteering that my heart was probably in it, and which it was.
The word peer is being overused and it is a label. And it automatically means some people look at you different. Automatically, as soon as they hear the word peer, because you have lived experience. And there’s so much, I don’t know if I would put it as prejudice but just, maybe even just unease around some people, you know? And that’s a systemic thing in a lot of agencies. That when they deal with people with lived experiences, “Aha,” all of a sudden, you know? They’re questioning your abilities or questioning something. Anyone with lived experience, and I can only speak for myself but it’s a very broad, ongoing issue, you know, that people with lived experience are looked at differently. And, you know, and that’s okay because people without lived experience, I may look at a little differently and be suspicious of their prejudices before I even encounter them.