For the first time in more than a decade, a former Cape Breton resident has returned to the bridge where he almost took his own life, until a stranger intervened.

Mark Henick says he doesn't remember much about that night. He knows it was in the winter of 2002 or 2003, and it was after midnight.

Henick, who was a teenager at the time, remembers standing at the end of the bridge in Sydney and then hearing a voice.

“Suddenly, I heard this voice of a man behind me, a stranger. He didn't try to jump in and solve all my problems right away, he just stood there talking to a kid on the edge of a bridge like you would anywhere else in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia,” he told CTV News in January.

The stranger saved his life, pulling him away from the edge.

That was a turning point for Henick, who is now a mental health advocate, and in January he put out a call on social media to find the man who saved his life.

“That day, within a few hours, I started to get some leads and then by that evening I was actually in touch with him by email,” he says.

Henick received a letter from the man, whose name is Mike Richey, but the two have yet to meet in person.

Henick says he’s not quite ready to take that step.

“This person has been a character in my mind, in my story for so many years, that to all of a sudden know that they’re a real person was a lot to process.”

While they haven’t met face-to-face, making a connection was important for both men. Richey told Henick he always wondered what happened to the boy he helped on the bridge that night.

“I really needed to get back in touch with my own story, to get grounded again into why I do this in the first place,” says Henick.

He returned to Sydney on Thursday to speak at Cape Breton University’s Mental Health Week. Organizers say they wanted to bring in a speaker who was from the Island.

“We knew that Mark was from the Cape Breton area and we think that Mark’s story would really resonate with people and it’s really close to home,” says organizer Mark Taylor Vickers.

Henick decided that he would also take the time to visit the bridge. He says it wasn’t easy to return to the place where he almost took his life, but it was something he needed to do.

“I think it’s important to do these things, to face these difficult periods in my life because that’s how I grow.”

Henick hopes sharing his story will help fight the stigma of mental illness, and perhaps convince someone to seek help, like he did.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Sarah Ritchie