After losing their 24-year-old son, brother and friend to an accidental fentanyl overdose, the Burger-Treep family wanted to create something positive from their grief.

Four years later, their annual Zen4Ben event has grown into a community gathering focused on music, mental health, connection and reducing stigma surrounding addiction.

“After a year, we realized we were going to live with the loss for the rest of our lives and that something positive had to come of his death,” Ben’s mother, Kirsten, says.

In 2023, the family decided to celebrate Ben’s life with a three-day hip-hop concert, recognizing his love of the genre and his experience as a promoter and show organizer. The event, called the Sonshine Music Festival, featured a strong lineup of professional and amateur artists and songwriters, and became the foundation’s inspiration for creating an annual event, Kirsten says.

In its second year, the event grew even larger, attracting artists from as far away as Miami, Florida. However, the family eventually decided the concert format did not fully reflect the vision they had for the Sonshine – Ben’s Legacy Foundation, where Kirsten serves as president.

“We wanted to create something more than a concert that people paid to come to. The foundation’s mission statement is to create hope, health and healing through the arts, sport and education,” she says. “We wanted our event to be more of a community collaboration.”

In its third year, the foundation began working with addiction and suicide-prevention agencies that connected with its vision and saw the event as a positive step toward improving mental health among people in the community.

Foundation members also took training in rural mental health, emotional first aid and ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Training), Kirsten says.

“We realized there is a great deal of stigma surrounding a person who has passed by substance-based harm, and that suicide, mental health and addiction often go hand in hand,” she says.

Those experiences motivated the foundation to expand its focus beyond an annual event, helping individuals, families and communities affected by “these tragedies of our time” while acting as a facilitator for mental health services.

The foundation now facilitates a peer-led support group in partnership with Moms Stop The Harm, a national coalition working to reduce stigma surrounding addiction and substance use.

“In 2025, we received a rural mental health grant to do a discovery to see how many ways we can help in our community, not bound by physical location,” Kirsten says.

That same year, the foundation held a free one-day event called Bannock and Jam, designed to showcase local talent while encouraging information sharing and community connection.

“It was a success in that numerous people came and connected with each other, and businesses donated time, goods and money,” she says.

This year, the foundation held its fourth annual Zen4Ben event in Faust on Aug. 1. The free, family-friendly event featured live music performances, volleyball, forest walks and activities focused on mental health awareness and community engagement. Running from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., the event also included two guided forest walks supported through a Jane Goodall Institute Roots & Shoots grant. The walks — one lasting about 50 minutes and the other about 75 minutes — were open to families, with registration recommended due to limited space.

The foundation also worked with organizations including the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Calgary Centre for Suicide Prevention, which recognize the value of creating spaces where people can share their stories honestly and without judgment, Kirsten says.

“We are humbled by the number of agencies, businesses, corporations and individuals who connect with what we are doing,” she says.

“The stigma is real, but the majority of people can identify with a loss of this kind in some way.”
Kirsten says the foundation’s events are designed to be inclusive and incorporate a variety of approaches to improving mental health and strengthening community connections.

The name Zen4Ben reflects both the event’s fourth year and the four pillars of mental health the foundation believes help create stronger individuals and communities: connection, support, engagement and education.

William Hetherington
Lakeside Leader