LONDON, Ontario — Mitchell Marner said his commitment to raising awareness surrounding mental health has helped him move on from an incident in May in which he and his fiancée Stephanie LaChance were the victims of a carjacking.
Marner and LaChance were held up by three suspects, two armed with guns and another with a knife, who took off in Marner’s vehicle.
“It was scary and we’re fortunate no one was hurt, but it does play on you mentally,” the Toronto Maple Leafs forward said. “Fortunately, we had people around us we could talk to and confide in. That really helped. Unfortunately, not everyone does.
“I know what it means to talk about it. A lot of men don’t want to talk about traumatic things in their lives, about depression. It’s the type of stigma, type of stereotype we want to overcome.”
Marner is trying to overcome that through the Marner Assist Foundation, which hosted the Sink the Stigma initiative on Thursday to benefit the London Health Sciences Centre’s First Episode Mood and Anxiety Program.
The inaugural miniature golf event took place in East Park London, where the facility’s course featured a specially designed hole in Marner’s honor that would flash a red goal light whenever a ball sunk into the bottom of the cup.
At the end of the event, Marner presented a check for $25,000 to the London Health Sciences Foundation.
London holds a special place for Marner, who played for the Knights of the Ontario Hockey League from 2013-16 and frequently visited children in local hospitals. It was also where he developed a close bond with his “hero,” Hayden Foulon, who died at the age of 7 in October 2019 following a six-year battle with leukemia.
“Touring those medical facilities and visiting the people in them, this is the place where I developed a desire to one day have my own charity,” Marner said.
“Mental health is such an important issue. I’d thought about doing something in support of it a few years ago. The pandemic and the [carjacking] only fueled my desire to help.”
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