How former city councillor Keith Egli turned trauma into a message for survivors

When former Knoxdale–Merivale city councillor Keith Egli opted not to seek re-election, he was in the midst of his most challenging term on council.

In 2018, the Arlington Woods part of his ward had been devastated by tornadoes. Then, in 2022, came another severe weather event when a powerful derecho struck much of Nepean. 

Tensions were high over the city’s light rail system, which had been plagued with breakdowns since its launch in 2019, and confidence in OC Transpo was slipping. Egli was also chairing the Ottawa Public Health board during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before entering municipal politics, Egli spent decades working as a litigation lawyer, representing clients in complex legal disputes and building a reputation for steady, methodical work — a career that, like his time on council, required composure under pressure and careful judgment.

But an inner battle had been brewing.

For about a decade, Egli had been suffering from panic attacks and chronic pain in his groin and face. His family noticed he was often angry. Unsure why, the politician sought countless doctors and treatments. Nothing seemed to work.

After serving three terms, Egli already felt it was time for new blood and chose not to seek re-election in 2022. 

He was ready to try something new — but he also began confronting trauma that had long been buried. He sought therapy. He began journaling. And eventually, he decided to go public with his story in an opinion piece published in the Ottawa Citizen.

“As a very young child, I was sexually abused,” Egli wrote.

Not going into specifics, he shared that his abuser — who was his parish priest — has long since died. Egli said his parents never knew, and he only began telling family members about what had happened roughly a decade earlier after experiencing a panic attack during a physiotherapy appointment.

“My brain was flooded with a torrent of images that would not stop. I cried and shook uncontrollably,” he wrote.

That column changed more than he expected.

Within days, people began reaching out — survivors themselves, or family members trying to help someone they loved. Many had never heard of the support services available to them.

“People would contact me,” Egli said in a recent interview with the Ottawa Lookout. “They would send me an email or message me on whatever app and say, ‘You know, this happened to me,’ or happened to my brother, sister, whatever. I didn’t know what was out there to help me.”

Those conversations eventually helped lead him somewhere he hadn’t planned to go next: writing a book, which will be launched during an event at Ben Franklin Place starting at 6:30 p.m. on April 16.

The book’s title traces back to a moment when Egli nearly stepped away from his peer-support program altogether. After a particularly difficult stretch, he told his wife, Kristen, he wasn’t sure he could continue. She encouraged him to keep going, calling him a “Tenacious Little Fucker.”

The phrase stayed with him. He later had the initials “TLF” tattooed on his arm — in lettering reminiscent of Incredible Hulk comics — as a reminder to keep moving forward.

The memoir itself grew out of the journals he began keeping as part of therapy. At first, the writing was simply a way to process what he was learning about himself. But after speaking publicly for the first time, he realized how many others were carrying similar experiences quietly.

“People don’t like to talk about it, and men in particular don’t like to talk about it,” he said. “A lot of survivors just kind of don’t tell people about it and aren’t quite sure how to deal with it.”

National research suggests childhood sexual abuse is more common than many people realize. According to Statistics Canada’s 2018 Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces, about 11 per cent of Canadians reported experiencing sexual abuse before the age of 15, including roughly 4 per cent of men. 

Research published by the Department of Justice Canada in 2019 also found many male survivors never disclose what happened to them — something Egli said he encountered repeatedly after sharing his own story publicly.

Statistics Canada has also reported that about 27 per cent of Canadians experienced physical or sexual abuse before age 15, underscoring the broader scope of childhood trauma across the population.

Egli said he’s felt far less alone since participating in programming through Voice Found, an Ottawa-based survivor-led organization that provides recovery support and education focused on preventing child sexual abuse and helping survivors rebuild after it.

Its programming includes peer-support groups, trauma-informed health services and training for professionals and community organizations. The organization describes its approach as “rooted in lived experience,” with a goal of ensuring survivors are “heard, supported, and empowered.”

Through its Strength Found program, the organization runs structured 15-week peer-support groups that help survivors better understand the long-term impacts of childhood abuse and develop coping tools alongside others with similar experiences.

After Egli wrote his Ottawa Citizen column, interest in its programming increased quickly.

“Within, I think, 48 hours, the male program was fully subscribed,” Egli said. “One of the wonderful things about Voice Found is it’s free. Anybody can walk in the door and say, ‘This is what happened to me, and I want some help,’ and you will get it.”

He said one of the biggest barriers survivors face is uncertainty about whether they will be believed.

“Often the person who does the abuse is someone known to the family,” he said. “It can be a teacher, it can be a coach, it can be a scout leader, it can be a pastor, it can be a priest.”

Egli remembers one encounter after his column appeared that stayed with him. A woman approached him in public and told him how fortunate he was to have supportive family members. She repeated it again, then began to cry.

“Without her saying it,” Egli said, “my estimation was that she had disclosed … and hadn’t been believed.”

For Egli, understanding what had happened helped explain years of physical and emotional reactions he hadn’t previously connected.

“This happened to me when I was quite young, and I just suppressed it completely,” he said. “Then things started to click. Things started to make sense.”

Even everyday habits suddenly had context.

“If I’m on a plane or at a show or something, I always take the aisle seat because I can get out fast,” he said. “I walk into a room, and my brain right away goes to, how do I get out of here?”

Even as he continued serving residents through emergencies ranging from tornado recovery to the pandemic, Egli said very few people around him knew what he was experiencing privately.

“Only one person at City Hall knew what was going on, and that was Dr. [Vera] Etches,” he said, referring to Ottawa’s then Medical Officer of Health. “We had a conversation when I was chairing up at OPH. I figured this was a safe conversation. She understands.”

At the time, he said, he relied heavily on staff and colleagues who supported him day to day — even if they didn’t fully know why.

“I had wonderful staff that would — I knew they were always there and always helpful,” he said. “They didn’t know how much I was relying on them necessarily, but I knew.”

When someone goes through immense trauma, forgiveness is often described as part of the path forward. Nelson Mandela once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” Theologian Lewis B. Smedes put it another way: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

For Egli, those ideas didn’t arrive all at once. They began with a much quieter and more difficult question — one he carried for years.

“I used to think … I have three siblings. None of these things happened to them. We were in the same family, and grew up in the same neighbourhood. We all knew the same people, and I said, ‘What did I do? Why did it happen to me? What did I do?’”

Letting go of that question, he said, became one of the hardest steps in moving forward.

“As a survivor, if you can — and I say if you can, because there’s no judgement here at all — you need to forgive yourself,” he said. “That’s the first level of forgiveness.”

Only later, Egli said, does the harder question come.

“Even forgiving the person who did this to you is about you,” he said. “It’s about letting go of a weight.”

Today, Egli says the work is ongoing.

The panic attacks haven’t disappeared entirely. Sometimes they still come on for no reason, like when he was standing in the checkout line at Metro and froze. There are still nights when a flashback interrupts sleep. 

But he says the frequency has dropped, and he has a better understanding of how to respond with coping skills when they happen.

“It’s been good for me to talk about it. I feel lighter, and I don’t carry around as much stuff with me. It’s been quite beneficial in my relationships within the family,” said Egli. “I was a very angry guy because I was in a lot of pain and I had no idea why. 

“It doesn’t excuse my behaviour at the time, but it gives it context. I now understand, my wife understands, my kids understand. That’s been really helpful in building relationships in a better, stronger way within the family.”

With the book now complete, Egli says his goal isn’t to focus on the dark backstory of what he experienced. Instead, he hopes it becomes a tool others can use as they begin confronting their own trauma. The book also includes a chapter written by his wife, Kristen, describing how his struggles affected their marriage and family life.

“I want people to feel that it’s okay to have that conversation,” he said. “It’s okay to tell people. It’s okay to ask for help.”