Let’s Bond Creates a Grant to Advance Bipolar Disorder Research

The Let’s Bond Foundation is once again joining forces with the Douglas Foundation to create a research grant in honour of someone very special: Jonathan Laurin. 

Jonathan’s family chose to establish this grant to advance research on bipolar disorder. We sincerely thank them for their trust. 

Through this initiative, we want to honour Jonathan and share who he was, while highlighting how his story continues to make a meaningful difference today. 

We met with Anna-Isabelle, Jonathan’s longtime friend and a volunteer who has been involved with Let’s Bond since its very beginning. 

What followed was a deeply personal conversation filled with memories, emotion and, above all, immense affection for Jonathan. Today, we invite you to share in part of that conversation. 

 

There are people who leave a mark that can never be erased. People who fill a room with warmth, light, and generosity without even trying. Jonathan Laurin was one of those people. “He would walk into a room and light it up. He was truly like a sun.” 

Let’s Bond was born from a natural convergence of two worlds. For a long time, Anna-Isabelle had witnessed the reality of mental illness up close — a member of her family was living with bipolar disorder. Diagnoses, medication adjustments, darker periods: she had seen it all. A lawyer by training, she became involved with the Douglas Foundation, where she would serve on the board of directors for seven years, convinced of the importance of research and the need to develop more tailored, more humane treatments. At the same time, her partner, Louis-Philippe, co-founded Let’s Bond. Anna-Isabelle helped grow the organization from the very beginning — “their baby,” as she still calls it today. Naturally, the paths of Let’s Bond and the Douglas Foundation eventually crossed. 

Among the people who gravitated around Let’s Bond from its early days was Jonathan Laurin. A close friend of Anna-Isabelle and Louis-Philippe, and a presence impossible to forget. 

He sold tickets for the Bal Urbain, participated in events, and brought people together wherever he went. “Everyone wanted him at their party,” Anna-Isabelle recalls with a nostalgic smile. “He was positive, always there for others.” 

Becoming an ambassador for Let’s Bond was, for Jonathan, a way to give meaning to what he was going through. Behind the light he brought to those around him, he was also experiencing profound suffering. 

Over the years, Jonathan lived with bipolar disorder and faced a reality that many loved ones of people living with mental health conditions know all too well: finding the right treatment can be an extremely difficult journey. 

“In your head, it’s so complex,” explains Anna-Isabelle. “You try medications, there are side effects, sometimes you don’t recognize yourself anymore…” 

But for Jonathan, the suffering wasn’t limited to what he was experiencing mentally. It was also deeply physical. He often spoke of pain in his body, a constant, heavy ache that was hard to explain. Despite the treatments, despite the attempts to help him, he didn’t feel like he was getting better. He felt disconnected from himself, as if he were gradually losing a part of who he was. 

Then the pandemic hit. Isolation set in. Jonathan gradually withdrew, cut ties, and moved back in with his mother in the Laurentians. Despite the efforts of his loved ones, his suffering grew heavier and heavier. 

One evening in June, the news broke: Jonathan had died by suicide. The shock was immense. Incomprehensible. Anna-Isabelle remembers getting into her car to go be with Jonathan’s mother, whom she had never met before. “I just knew I had to be there.” She arrived holding a plant in her hands, not knowing what to say or what to do, except try to share a little of the weight of that pain. 

And then there was one detail no one will ever forget. Before he died, Jonathan had hidden little love notes all around the house for his mother. Messages she continues to discover, even today, as time goes by. Like one final way of taking care of her. Like proof that even through suffering, his love for others remained immense. “He didn’t want to hurt people,” Anna-Isabelle says, her voice still fragile. 

In the midst of this tragedy, those small pieces of paper say so much about who Jonathan was: someone deeply caring and sensitive. A few days after the funeral, while the grief still felt unbearable, Anna-Isabelle felt an urgent need to transform that pain into something greater. “I told myself: we have to do something. We have to create a grant in his name.”

And that is how the Jonathan Laurin Grant for Hope was born. 

This gesture carries a profoundly human message: even through pain, we must continue investing in research, supporting the researchers working to better understand the brain, and believing that it is possible to improve care. Because it is through research that we will develop treatments tailored to each person’s needs and medications with fewer side effects. It is through research that we will find the solutions we so desperately need. 

When Anna-Isabelle speaks about Jonathan, the emotion is still palpable. But it is that very emotion that drives her to act — and that builds hope that things can change. 

In memory of Jonathan Laurin. 

 

The Let’s Bond Foundation brings together dedicated young professionals working to break the stigma surrounding mental health. Since 2011, the foundation has been raising awareness within Montreal’s business community and organizing events that bring people together to raise funds for partner organizations working in prevention, research, and rehabilitation. To date, Let’s Bond has raised $1.5 million in support of the Douglas Foundation. 

The Jonathan Laurin Grant for Hope will support bipolar disorder research at the Douglas every year.