After his attacker’s fists pounded Kyle Mockford multiple times in the head during an unprovoked attack, the young Victoria man was left with black eyes, stitches in his left eyebrow and a severe brain injury that threw his life into turmoil for a decade.
Now, he’s fighting back, hoping to push for more treatment for traumatic brain injuries, which happen to 456 people every day in Canada and are the subject of a B.C. politician’s private member’s bill in the House of Commons.
“It does not get the attention or the awareness that it deserves. I think it is an invisible disability. I do think people who have a brain injury, they get looked at as somebody who is just a ‘normal person,’ but behind the layers they can be really struggling,” said Mockford, 33.
“My parents would both testify that I’m a completely different person.”
While he was in high school in Mill Bay, a leadership course led Mockford to volunteer work. He twice went to Africa to build houses and assist impoverished people and he was part of local organizations, such as the Rotary Club.
By age 23, he was working in Victoria and planned to start an international development diploma at Camosun College in January 2013.
But everything changed on Dec. 28, 2012, when he went with friends to a bar in Victoria where Mockford bumped into a female friend and her new boyfriend, who told Mockford to leave his girlfriend alone.
Mockford, who was a sober designated driver that evening, said he agreed and did not see the man again until he was walking to his car with a friend.
“I heard my friend say, ‘Run!’ And I looked behind me and before I could even run or turn around, I started getting hit by this guy,” he recalled.
“All I remember is not even being able to do anything and just falling to the ground. And before I knew it, I heard ambulances in the distance, and then being in and out consciousness, and then waking up and almost screaming with this extreme headache.”
A medical report from Royal Jubilee Hospital indicates Mockford suffered a serious concussion and a bad injury to his frontal lobe, the part of the brain that controls language, impulse control and decision-making.
He had angry outbursts and mood swings, couldn’t hold down a job, failed at returning to school, and struggled with depression and anxiety.
He said he was not offered counselling or further medical help.
“I was basically in a dark hole of anger, and feeling just betrayed by the system and falling through the cracks.”
Canada needs a national strategy for brain injury awareness, prevention and treatment, says Cowichan-Malahat-Langford NDP MP Alistair MacGregor. In June 2022, MacGregor introduced his private member’s bill, Bill-277, which also calls for improved rehabilitation for brain-injury patients.
“I don’t think enough attention has been paid to it,” said MacGregor. “If it’s not diagnosed properly, and if you don’t have the proper interventions, it can have profound effects not only on the individual who’s living with it, but society.”
It’s rare that private member’s bills become law, but MacGregor hopes his will at least lead to more attention about brain injuries. A petition supporting the bill has been signed by 1,043 people.
MacGregor said he got help crafting the bill from the non-profit group Brain Injury Canada and from his constituent Janelle Breese, who created the Const. Gerald Breese Traumatic Life Losses Centre following the death of her husband, who suffered a brain injury after his RCMP motorcycle was hit by a car in 1990.
Statistics Canada reports that hospitalization for traumatic brain injuries has increased among women, from 39 for every 100,000 people in 2006-07 to 48 in 2017-18 (the most recent statistics available). The increase among men was from 80 to 84 per 100,000 people during that time frame.
According to Brain Injury Canada, nearly four per cent of people live with a brain injury, which equates to 1.5 million Canadians, and the indirect economic costs due to working-age disability are predicted to reach $8.3 billion annually in the coming years.
In 2022, a decade after his injury, Mockford began turning his life around, joining a local brain injury society, where staff taught him tools to better understand his injury. That has motivated him to start a blog that he hopes will help other brain-injury victims, connect with his Métis heritage, maintain a sawmill job, and make long-term plans for school.
“My advice is to reach out, even as hard as it might be, to ask for support,” Mockford said. “To not lose hope and to keep moving forward and to believe in yourself … I’m still on my healing journey.”
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