Leading up to World Mental Health Day, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) invites you to join two intersectional programs centred on mental health: Caring to Sharing with Colour and the Medicine Wheel, led by knowledge keeper Marilyn Dykstra, and the Love Notes Campaign, led by Ralph Bryant.

Across communities, conversations about mental health can be difficult to begin. Barriers such as stigma, limited access to care, and differing cultural understandings can leave many people without the support they need.

Through artistic expression and community connection, these programs invite participants to consider mental health through a human rights lens and reflect on what it means to create communities where everyone can support one another with dignity, compassion and care.

Knowledge keeper Marilyn Dykstra will lead a program that brings together Indigenous approaches to health promotion through the medicine wheel.

The program encourages participants to consider mental health through a holistic medicine wheel approach, which recognizes the importance of movement and balance. Often, people focus on their physical selves and intellectual knowledge while overlooking their emotional and spiritual selves. This can create an imbalance in a person’s medicine wheel. When the wheel begins to wobble, a person may fall.

Participants are invited to explore each section of the medicine wheel and share their thoughts on how to nurture all parts of themselves. Each space will offer a prompting question to encourage conversation, introspection and sharing.

Participants will also be able to leave their suggestions and words of encouragement for others — because we all need a little help from our friends.

The Love Notes Campaign will host an art‐making activity called “Love‐In.” The “Love‐In” is an art and community gathering where Manitobans create and share their own messages of healing. It creates space for authentic connection, creative expression and collective healing across Manitoba’s diverse communities.

The Love Notes Campaign transforms public spaces into canvasses of compassion, using positive affirmations to elevate mental health awareness in Winnipeg and throughout Manitoba. Its mission is to disrupt and transform the global conversation and commerce around mental health and wellness, increasing capacity, connection and community.

The vision of the Love Notes Campaign is to reimagine mental health so that everyone, everywhere, every day can heal loudly… together.

Looking Ahead to World Mental Health Day

On October 10, 2026, World Mental Health Day, the Love Notes Campaign will deliver a “Love‐Ingo” of positive affirmations across Winnipeg, displaying posters with inspirational messages throughout the city.

Both programs will take place on Sifton Terrace, Level 6, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free throughout the day and Museum visitors are welcome to drop in and participate.

Marilyn Dykstra

Marilyn Dykstra is a status Bill C‑31 First Nations woman from northern Manitoba. She has been immersed in a working matriarchal system that practised Indigenous ways of thinking and being since she was born. Alongside her family, she has participated in many peaceful social justice movements.

Marilyn uses her matriarchal knowledge as a foundation for her work in the Indigenous community, which has been ongoing for over 30 years. She still follows her matriarchal teachings, but she has also spent her life learning traditional knowledge and passing the teachings on.

She is a pow wow dancer, knowledge keeper, and she carries the responsibility of a bundle. She happily participates in naming ceremonies, sweats, pipe ceremonies, moon teachings and more.

Ralph Bryant

Ralph Bryant is a queer poet, father and mental health advocate who is passionate about building community and inclusion to create a world that is more equitable and full of joy. Ralph is the founder of the Love Notes Campaign, which transforms public spaces into canvasses of compassion, using positive affirmations to elevate mental health awareness in Winnipeg, throughout Manitoba, and beyond. As a poet, he has published three books of poetry, and his quest for healing and spiritual growth across North America is what brought him to Manitoba, where he is currently working on a new poetic project about his time living in Winnipeg. He has performed for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Black History Manitoba and Pride Winnipeg, and has competed in the Winnipeg Poetry Slam.