Hundreds of Calgarians are expected to gather in downtown Calgary on Monday to mark National Addictions Awareness Week.
Calgary’s 20th annual Wellness Walk begins at Shaw Millennium Park at 11 a.m. Participants will march through the downtown core, ending at the Kerby Centre on 7 Avenue S.W.
Organizers say the goal of the walk is to encourage positive action toward the prevention of substance and gambling dependencies.
In total, 21 community agencies and organizations are taking part.
The march comes just one month after a two-day conference discussing the ongoing fentanyl crisis was held in Calgary.
READ MORE: ‘We are in the middle of a crisis’: fentanyl focus of two-day Calgary conference
During the conference, Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley said the drug continues to present a “significant danger to the people of Alberta,” with 153 deaths associated with fentanyl in the province in the first six months of 2016, compared with 139 over the same period last year.
In total, there were 274 deaths associated with fentanyl in Alberta in 2015, according to Alberta Health Services.