By Lethbridge Herald on July 3, 2026.
Herald Photo by Justin Seward
Rich and Pam Eyram are doing a cross-country journey to raise awareness and funds for youth mental health.
By Justin Seward
Lethbridge Herald
A retired Ontario couple is trying to make difference for youth mental health with their cross-country journey.
Rich and Pam Eyram left Vancouver on May 31 and are ending their 7,700 km 75-day Live A Great Story self-funded journey on Sept. 8. in Halifax.
Live A Great Story will focus on youth mental health awareness and raising funds for Kids Help Phone.
KHP is a free mental health service for Canadian youth and operates 24/7.
Rich, who was a tech executive for 30 years before retiring recently, is cycling approximately 125 kilometres per day while Pam is driving their awareness campervan and they made a stop in Lethbridge on Tuesday.
“Over the course of this winter, people kept asking us ‘Well, what are you riding for?’,” said Rich.
“We spent quite a long time talking about what would that purpose be and that’s where everything started to connect.”
Rich spoke further how things started to connect for this ride.
“Since the pandemic we’ve had a lot of friends and family who have struggled with… mental health (of their youth), so their children and their own communities,” said Rich.
“When Pam asked, she said well what do you want to do it for, and I said let’s do it for Kids Help Phone. We know that (with) youth mental health, the crisis is hitting so many families around the country. So that’s how we connected the endurance journey, the physical journey of riding across the country, and exploring this wonderful country to the purpose.”
It was near the beginning of this year that the journey was going to be made possible.
“We really just double downed on the idea and then we reached out to the KHP folks, met with them, and everything started to snowball in a matter of weeks on creating the purpose and raising $100,000 for youth mental health ,” said Rich.
Pam retired from being a social worker where she specialized in youth.
However, the in-person work with children came to a halt during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
“So, I transitioned and started volunteering for KHP,” said Pam.
“This obviously is near and dear to my heart and so that’s why we chose KHP.”
What Pam is looking forward to is collaborating with people who are doing youth mental health work in their respective communities.
“What’s been great for me is meeting all these people in communities who are excited about and are passionately out there working with youth in the community around mental health,” said Pam.
Rich feels the emotions of Pam’s visits in the communities after his cycling for the day is done.
“I get emotional and get teary … at the end of the day when I see Pam wherever we end up camping or parking and she tells me about where she stopped, who she spoke too and all the stories that we’re hearing of how this is such an incredible topic to start discussing,” said Rich.
Statistics show that 1 in 2 youth between the ages of 5-29 struggle alone with mental health and KHP communicated 3.7 million times with people who are younger through various communications in 2025.
More info on Live A Great Story and how you can donate can be found at www. liveagreatstory.ca.
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