Preventing Suicide on the Granville Street Bridge

Background
On Wednesday, June 3, 2026, Stacy Ashton, Executive Director of the Crisis Centre of BC, will appear before Vancouver City Council to speak in strong support of funding and installing suicide prevention barriers on the Granville Street Bridge.

These below speaking points call on the City of Vancouver to treat suicide prevention barriers as lifesaving infrastructure.

The message is clear: suicide prevention barriers save lives.

Speaking Notes
At the Crisis Centre, suicide prevention is not an abstract policy issue. It is not a resolution put forward for a decision. It is the work we do every hour of every day. We are there when someone is not sure they can make it through the next ten minutes. We are there when a family member is terrified for someone they love. We are there after a suicide loss, when people are left trying to survive a grief that changes the shape of their whole life.

So when we speak about barriers on the Granville Street Bridge, we are speaking from the frontlines of suicide prevention. We know these moments. We know how quickly they can unfold. And we know that time, interruption, and connection can save a life.

When a person is experiencing a suicidal crisis, clear thought is difficult. The desire to escape the current situation temporarily overwhelms hope for a better future. People talk about feeling like they are a burden, that the world would be a better place without them in it. When people come out of a suicidal despair, most of what they thought at the time just doesn’t make sense anymore – because a suicidal crisis is the opposite of a rational state of mind.

This is precisely why physical barriers at known suicide locations save lives. They interrupt a moment of acute crisis. They create time for a person to pause, for help to arrive, for a crisis line phone to be used, and for first responders or others to support a person toward safety.

Most people who survive a suicidal crisis do not go on to die by suicide. That matters. It means the bridge can be the difference between a life that ends and a life that continues. A barrier does not solve every pain in a person’s life, but it can interrupt the moment when pain becomes fatal.*

When we lose someone to suicide, we lose the life that could have been. For those who have lost a loved one to suicide, every day is another day their person should be alive. The thought of “if only there had been a way to stop them” is incredibly painful when we know that, in the case of bridges, there was a way: bridge barriers.

The Granville Street Bridge is a known location of concern. The City of Vancouver acknowledges the need for barriers, yet funding has been delayed, made contingent on other levels of government, and then removed from the current capital plan. Today, I wholeheartedly support Councilor Dominato’s motion to prioritize suicide prevention fencing on the Granville Bridge, and to put it back into the capital plan.

The question before Council should not be whether suicide prevention barriers are necessary. They are. The question is whether the City will treat them with the urgency that lifesaving infrastructure deserves. Bridge building is almost entirely driven by safety considerations: bridges have to be as safe for the driver of a semi-trailer as for a parent pushing a stroller. We don’t question the costs of high-quality materials, bridge maintenance, crosswalks, and the myriad of other regulations that ensure bridge safety.

Suicide prevention barriers save lives. They are not optional. Future deaths from the Granville Street Bridge can be prevented. Future grief can be prevented. Future risk and trauma for first responders and bystanders can be prevented.

So let’s prevent these tragedies. Let’s make it right.

 

* 90% of individuals who attempt suicide, do not ultimately die by suicide.

 

We are pleased that the motion passed unanimously at the Vancouver City Council meeting on June 3, 2026.

We were impacted by the powerful speakers and comments from the Council, summarized below.

You can watch the recording of the City Council meeting here.

 

What we heard from other speakers

Dr. Brandon Yau, Medical Health Officer, Vancouver Coastal Health

“Suicide deaths from this bridge are preventable tragedies.”

These suicides impact the individual involved, their loved ones, first responders, healthcare workers, bystanders, and our community at large. Means prevention is an established, evidence-based approach to preventing suicide. It is critical, life-saving infrastructure for people experiencing momentary, acute mental health crises.

The City of Vancouver has demonstrated their leadership in this space by the installation of fencing on Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in 2015 and Burrard Bridge in 2017. There have been no suicide deaths on these bridges since then.

Currently, Granville Bridge has the second highest number of suicide deaths of any Vancouver bridge, averaging around 2.6 deaths every year.

The installation of fencing on Granville Bridge would save lives and would be a highly worthwhile investment. Our team at VCH looks forward to our continued collaboration with the City of Vancouver on this topic.

 

Tom Lancaster, General Manager, Granville Island

“This is not about pulling on heartstrings. It is fundamentally an issue of public safety.”

I’m assuming that we are all on the same page: that any one of us would do whatever we could to save just one human life, let alone prevent needless deaths for decades into the future.

While we all know this is a priority, where it stands amongst other capital spending priorities may be a cause for debate. I do understand that. Here’s some perspective, though.

Granville Island is one of the most visited places in all of Canada. Last year, we welcomed just under 11 million visitors. Tens of thousands of people every day wander our public spaces, on, around, and underneath the Granville Bridge. More than half of those visiting are children and families. There’s also 3,100 people working full-time on Granville Island.

Prioritizing this fencing is not about pulling on heartstrings. It is fundamentally an issue of public safety, supporting small business, protecting workers, and protecting the public.

 

Emma, ninth grader and local resident

“Since when do we put a price tag on human life?”

My name is Emma and I’m only in the ninth grade at West Point Grey Academy. I live next to the Granville Street Bridge and I’m highly in favor of this motion.

Today I’m speaking not only for myself, but for families in my building, residents along Beach Crescent, people on Granville Island, and everyone who’s been forced to witness these tragedies that happen on the bridge due to the absence of suicide barriers.

This bridge has caused years of trauma for me, beginning when I was only 12 years old.

I saw a man sitting on the edge of the bridge, moments away from ending his life. I stood there crying, later, trying to understand what could bring someone to that point, with my mom struggling to explain it to me.

No child should ever have to witness that, but it didn’t end there.

Over the years, I’ve watched people sit on that edge again and again. I’ve seen people jump, and I’ve seen a dead woman in my driveway. And on May 12th, I watched a woman hanging from the bridge. She was there for eight hours.

That night, I laid in my bed trying to fall asleep as quickly as possible because I was terrified of hearing a body hit the floor.

Those images don’t leave you.They steal your sense of safety and they change the way that you feel in your own home.I can barely live with my blinds open anymore because I’m afraid of what I might see outside my window. And yet, despite years of warnings and preventable deaths and years of residents speaking up, suicide barriers continue to be ignored because of cost.

So my question is, since when do we put a price tag on human life?

Since when does money take precedence over saving lives?

Because these barriers create time for intervention and give people in crisis the chance to get home safely. They protect families from unimaginable loss and every life saved means a family does not lose someone they love. They protect communities like mine. They protect residents, workers and children from witnessing trauma that can stay with them forever. And we already know that they work. After suicide prevention barriers were installed on the Burrard Bridge, fatalities stopped.

We have evidence. We know that these barriers save lives. So why does it come down to cost?

Recently, I received a response from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office informing me that my concerns have been forwarded to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Public Safety. These issues are being taken seriously and could receive federal support. But we need action and immediate action. Every delay in the construction of these barriers means another opportunity for tragedy, another life lost, another family shattered, and another young person forced to witness something they should never have to see.

The question is no longer whether these barriers work or if they’re needed. The question is: how many more people have to die before we decide that their lives are worth protecting?

 

What we heard from city councillors

Lisa Dominato
There’s the impact on the victims, their families, but also the public safety component. We all know the complexity of mental health and that what we need is a continuum. Means prevention is a way of intervening and preventing loss of life. And I think that, at the end of the day, the right thing to do is to advance this work.

Pete Fry
It seems this is a perennial debate. We still come back and we never find the funding. Meanwhile, people’s lives are lost and people are traumatized. These are real people. These are real damages that are preventable.

I hope we will actually see some meaningful movement, and actually put means prevention on the Granville Street Bridge. It’s far overdue.

Rebecca Bligh
In a city like Vancouver, where numerous bridges are part of our core infrastructure, I think we all recognize the weight of this topic.

It is our responsibility as a city to see this bridge as infrastructure that we own. And that this is part of building a bridge. This is part of maintaining city infrastructure. We have an imperative to protect our residents, to deliver this funding in the capital plan, and to say: this is a priority.

I look forward to seeing this identified as a key commitment and an expression of our values as a city when we are dealing with the capital plan in July.