Red Umbrella Campaign
Desperation…
The Women with Red Umbrellas came together in June, 2003 out of sheer desperation. After receiving letters from the Canadian Border Patrol stating that their shipments of EMPowerplus had been turned back or destroyed and demanding that they must go back to taking drugs from their prescribing doctor, nine women agreed to stand up for themselves and their kids. They wrote their stories in a weekend, booked flights and, having never met each other, gathered in the nation’s capital. Their plea was simple.
Over three thousand Canadians were using Truehope Nutritional Support’s flagship product, EMPowerplus as a substitute for medications. They couldn’t go back to being sicker, or using drugs that were proven more dangerous that vitamins. They must not be expected to return to inferior treatments that had not worked to relieve them of depressive or bipolar symptoms. The government needed to leave the people out of it while they settled the issue with Truehope.
A little history… in a nutshell
In December, 2002, a group of researchers from the University of Calgary Behavioural Research Dept. had published a small study about the effectiveness of EMPowerplus on the symptoms associated with depression and bipolar. The results sparked interest with the Alberta government who granted the university a half million dollars to continue the research. Within the month, Truehope received a cease and desist order, demanding that they stop all customer assistance and stop providing the vitamin and mineral formulation to Canadians; and the university was told to stop all research concerning the formulation and mental health.
Health Canada, the national regulatory body (like the FDA in the United States) was claiming to uphold a 1930’s law, which prohibited any treatment of specified diseases unless the treatment was regulated as a drug. They halted independent university research by claiming that the formulation must first go through a decade long and multimillion dollar procedure to pass as a drug rather than accepting it as a vitamin and mineral formulation – not because of the ingredients but because it was being used by people with depression and bipolar as a treatment for their disorders.
If a healthy person swallows it, it is a vitamin. If a bipolar person swallows it, it magically becomes a drug…
It was a mess. And innocent Canadians were stuck in the middle of a tangle between pharmaceutical lobbyists, lawmakers (on the right and on the left) and a fledgling nutritional company who didn’t have the resources to protect themselves or their clients.
On a rainy morning in downtown Ottawa, after a disappointing night failing to garner meaningful emergency support from Parliamentarian lawmakers, the women went to the corner store and bought up all the red umbrellas they had. They marched up the hill to the Parliament doors and stood their ground. As the media showed up, so did the members of Parliament… and progress toward a resolution and protection for the rights of Canadians to choose non-drug treatments began to unfold.
The last ten chapters of my book, “A Promise of Hope” switches gears from my personal history to tell the story of The Red Umbrellas and the court cases and frustrations that follow when sick people in the throws of institutionalized medicine decide to think outside the box. When I think about those days, I want to carry a red umbrella with me all of the time… Those were rebellious, enlightening and glorious days… They were stressful days too, that tested the depth and breadth of my stability in the most trying of circumstances.