If you've been to a certain part in the woods of Ontario then you may have come across the wind phone. A Canadian paramedic set up the shrine as a place to deal with grief, trauma, and stress after hearing about it in Japan. Mark Beaulieu said he came across the Japanese story while looking online and decided to make his own.
"I was scrolling on social media one day when I came across the story of a tsunami that happened in Japan. This one town was devastated by the tsunami. The only thing left standing in this area was a phone. And so this gentleman decided to name it a wind phone," Beaulieu told People.
In 2010, Itaru Sasaki set up a wind phone in Japan to mourn the loss of his cousin. It was set up in a phone booth and allowed him to talk to his deceased cousin. It was a way to communicate with the dead. After a tsunami hit Japan a year later, Sasaki set up the phone in the public, hoping to give his neighbors the same courtesy and help.
Wind Phone
Beaulieu came across this story and decided to create one in Canada. He wanted to deal with all the trauma of losing people as a paramedic through a 40 year career. He set up the phone in March in the woods.
"I had some psychological trauma," he shares. "I thought I wanted to help not just myself. But others maybe go through what they're going through with grieving. I thought, 'I'll do this and if it helps one or two people, then my job is done.' That's really all I was looking for."
Initially, he didn't tell anyone what he did. He didn't want credit for the phone.
"I didn't want accolades. I just saw it and thought it'd be a good idea for people to use. So I went sometime in March and put it up," Beaulieu said. "I didn't even tell my wife. She saw the phone in the garage, an old dial phone, and she was like, 'What are you going to do with that?' I said, 'I've got some plans.'"
He then showed his wife and daughter what he had been working on. His daughter Sydney soon shared the wind phone on TikTok where it went viral. It blew upon the platform. But the paramedic says that he didn't creat it for that. He created the wind phone for people to confront their grief.
Beaulieu said, "People really miss their family members and friends that are gone and passed over at this time of year. It hits during big events and so I think it struck a chord with a lot of people who saw it and shared it."
