Steinbach firefighter raises mental health awareness

A Steinbach firefighter is raising awareness about the mental health stigma first responders struggle with.

Russ Reimer, Steinbach Fire Department’s assistant fire chief and a fire-paramedic in Winnipeg, launched a non-profit called We See You Proactive Peer Support after he noticed fire-responders didn’t know how to start a dialogue about their mental health.

“A lot happens in the fire houses around the kitchen table, and we talk a certain way, and a lot of times, even for normal humans, they do this in passing. ‘Hey, how are you doing? Good. How about you? Good.’ But you keep passing by,” he told The Carillon.

Reimer, a 25-year veteran firefighter, went searching for a solution after his friend and fellow firefighter Preston Heinbigner died from suicide on April 9, 2024. While he worked with Heinbigner, Reimer said he didn’t see any signs and saw him as the “happiest guy who greeted you and knows your name.”

“He was a golden human and (it’s) definitely a horrible loss to the world,” he said. “This is no offense to anyone, but we saw him, but we didn’t really see him.”

While there was therapy support and resources available to first responders after a traumatic event happens, Reimer realized there wasn’t a proactive response that made firefighters comfortable to be honest about their feelings and go deeper than the basic, surface-level check-ins.

Reimer worked together with a firefighter from the Tache Fire Department to create a series of promotional guides and posters, detailing a number system for first responders to easily communicate their feelings and be honest with how they’re doing.

He began training people to ask what their number was on a scale of one to 10, with one feeling terrible and 10 feeling the best.

“If you give me a five, and I go ‘Well, huh? Is there anything I could do today to help you maybe be more of a seven. Would you have time for a coffee?’ It opens the door better and now I’m being proactive,” Reimer said.

Reimer hopes the simplicity of the model will create conversations and prevent future first responders’ suicides. Instead a firefighter dealing with the tough emotional weight of the job alone, there will be someone who will take interest and check on them, he said. Reimer has set of goal to eliminate first responder suicide.

“We’re the responders. We’re considered the saviors. We are the last people to reach to save ourselves,” he said.

Reimer wants to see the model to transform first responders, not just in Steinbach but around the world.

To start spreading the message, he began making videos on Instagram and garnered a following of 33,000 people on his account.

He’s travelled to Kelowna and Edmonton to speak with first responders and teach them his model so they can teach it to others. Reimer has also held dozens of Zoom meetings with people across Canada, the U.S. and Australia

Through social media, Reimer said he connected with a firefighter from the Tehran Fire Department in Iran on how to break the mental health stigma there. He hopes to travel to Iran to meet with the firefighter in person.

“Some people might think ‘this guy’s nuts,’ well I’m not nuts, but I love people,” Reimer said.

Reimer launched a GoFundMe in August 2025 to raise money to cover travel expenses and training resources as the non-profit grows. So far, it’s raised $3,392 of it’s $6,000 goal.