Trevor Kasteel to stage mental health production in Yellowknife

After a business failure, Trevor Kasteel broke down. Now, he wants to talk about it.

Kasteel’s Yellowknife-based construction company filed for bankruptcy protection in October last year.

He says he required mental health treatment in the aftermath as the pressure of dealing with a failing business combined with many other factors, among them sexual abuse he suffered when he was younger.

On Tuesday this week, he will host a free event at the city multiplex’s DND gym titled “It’s Time For Silence To Suffer.” No ticket is required. Doors open at 5:30pm with the event starting at 6pm.

“I‘m following my dream finally and moving into inspirational and motivational speaking work. I will share all my personal and professional life experience stories and learnings to date, no matter how uncomfortable,” Kasteel wrote in an email setting out what to expect.

“I will be vulnerable,” he wrote, adding he will “talk about all failures and weaknesses through various traumatic abuses, daily mental battles, suicidal thoughts, depression, bullying, anxiety, physical ailments, medications and on.”

“The goal is to spread love, courage and confidence, to help build people,” he concluded.

Kasteel joined Afternoons at the Cabin to explain more about how he found a way through the recent events in his life, why he wanted to talk about it in a public setting, and what he hopes his audience will get from the experience.

Listen to the interview on Monday, June 10’s edition of Afternoons at the Cabin from 12-3pm, or read a transcript below.

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This interview was recorded on June 7, 2024. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ollie Williams: Tell us about this event and what people should expect.

Trevor Kasteel: People might know me mostly from Kasteel Construction and Coatings, and the insolvency and the bankruptcy that we filed for on October 17 last year, just after the evacuation.

I love helping people. I tried to do that to the best of my ability with the company, and one of the problems of the downfall of the company – with the downfall of me – is that I was leaning too much with my heart instead of profit. The construction company has taught me a lot. I’ve kept going, no matter what.

What I try to do in my life is, even if it’s a very, very bad situation – and I know that I’ve hurt people, whether it’s family, friends, clients, subcontractors or whatever – I know I need to own up to it and face it, and I need to embrace it and learn from it to be better.

When the insolvency happened, what was happening to you at the same time?

That’s a big one. What happened to me? That’s messy. I think that’s the problem in life right now. You get almost robotic every day. You’re conditioned, and you’re programmed. Everybody’s going so fast that we’re almost dehumanizing ourselves and other people around us. I’ve apologized to certain people. I still have more people to apologize to, but I’m doing my best.

I’ve been suicidal in the past. I actually went on a suicide panel for the Department of Health, mental health and addictions, for all their counsellors across the Territories in January. I was at my breaking point. There was a series of events, including personal triggers from my sexual molestation that happened to me in the past. I charged the man while I was on city council in Yellowknife in 1996. I was molested for a period of six to seven years as a kid. Without getting too deep into that right now, with all the different things that were compounded by the evacuation, I reached a point where I was visualizing my own funeral service at the DND gym, and somebody speaking at it for me.

I was fighting those suicidal thoughts for about four or five days. I walked into my sister’s condo and said: “I need some help.” I broke down, finally. It was just the weight of restructuring talks with the company. I got admitted into mental health emergency and I saw a psychiatrist that night – and I let it out, man. It was like a machine gun, I just gave him everything that happened to me.

They shipped me off to Alberta Hospital. They brought me into building number 10, ward 2A. It’s a psych ward. I was in that facility for about four weeks.

How are you finding things now?

Life has been brutal, but I’ve only got two choices: either I’m going to do something about it or I’m going to sit there and wallow in self-pity. I’ve got to get off my ass and do something about it.

My heart was tied to my company, so that’s emotional. I love this community. I love the North. I love the people. I never meant to hurt anybody and I did my best, but there’s still suffering because of me and I hate that.

Every day it’s a monster that you fight, to a certain degree, every day because you’re infected with something that you didn’t even want – you trusted the person and so it’s the psychological battle that you face, and it is so complex.

When did you decide that you wanted to deal with this in a public format and hold an event?

June 11 is my birthday and the day my father died in 1982. So June 11 means a lot. It popped up one day: “I should do it on my birthday and give a gift to the people that I love, give a gift back to the North.”

I want to spread love and I also want to talk about humility. I think people these days view love and humility as weak. It is much stronger and much more powerful than the negativity that goes on out there. I want to spread courage and confidence.

What should people expect? What’s it going to look like?

It’s at the DND gym at the multiplex. I’m working with Pido Productions, who I have to thank from the bottom of my heart. And then also Event Rentals Yellowknife, they’ve been fantastic. There’s about 280 seats, there’s no reservations. The stage is in the centre because I want to be completely vulnerable. I’m going to be bringing things like empty pill bottles to show that I’m on antidepressants, all that kind of stuff. I’m also bringing my dad’s recliner, and I’m going to sit in the middle of the stage, I’m going to have a headset on, and I’m going to walk around and talk with people.

I’m just going to share the lived experiences. We’re human beings, and part of being human is to be human. To actually have a conversation, you need to connect. And if I went in there just talking about Trevor, doing a speech and walking out, what the hell is that? I need to build trust, I need to connect with the people, and how we connect is through stories. I don’t want to just talk about anxiety, I want to break that sucker down. What is anxiety? Let’s slow the hell down and let’s look at anxiety. When we talk about bullying, let’s dissect what a bully is. Let’s dissect what the victim of a bully is.

What do you want people to get from it?

I’m not shy to talk about my bankruptcies – and my personal bankruptcy now. And so the process of that, people may have questions. If people want to ask me what happened with the lawyers, if people want to ask me what happened with the trustees, if people want to ask me what happened with the auctions? Hey, man, I’m an open book.

I have to be careful with liability and I can’t answer questions that are going to harm other people or trigger people. This is for 13 or over, so I need to be very, very careful with the words that I’m using.

What I’m doing is I’m taking all the skills and tools that I’ve gathered – through my journalism diploma, television and radio, from doing the business as well as city council, all that kind of stuff – to build this production and make it the best it can be while being thoughtful of others.

It almost sounds like a production of your life.

That’s absolutely correct, which is very hard to do – and weird.