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Chris Jonasson’s life started off with great promise.

A talented football player, Jonasson was also kind and stood up for other kids who were being bullied.

“He was incredibly smart. They actually wanted to skip him ahead of grade in school,” his sister Lisa Meyer said in an interview this month at her home in Beaumont, Alta.

While he was still in elementary school, two chance tragedies changed Jonasson. He discovered the body of a classmate who had died by suicide, and later his best friend died suddenly.

Meyer believes those unresolved traumas led to her brother’s lifelong struggle with drug addiction and an