When Ailsa Dempster-Bell’s daughter Maddie was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, she was spending a lot of time at SickKids going through chemotherapy and surgery.
It was a tough time for the family, but Laurie Osborne, a local resident involved in the Terry Fox Run, reached out.
“She’d never met us before,” said Dempster-Bell. “And she dropped off a gift for Maddie and wanted us to know she was thinking of us.”
Knowing Osborne was involved in Newmarket’s Terry Fox Run, and with Maddie having the same cancer that Terry Fox did, Dempster-Bell and her family got involved.
“It made us realize the impact that the Terry Fox Run has,” said Dempster-Bell. “It’s done so much for Maddie’s type of cancer and the Terry Fox Run is a big part of the reason her story is different than others and she’s thriving today.”
Dempster-Bell has been participating in the Terry Fox Run in Newmarket since 2006, and the importance of getting out and fundraising isn’t lost on her after all these years.
“It’s still an emotional day for us,” she said. “It means a lot to us to go each year and it’s just amazing. We’ve lost more people to cancer since then, my dad and my sister, and everybody knows somebody with a cancer story.”
Maddie is now almost 23 years old and a university graduate, and Dempster-Bell says the Terry Fox Run is a reminder of how far the family has come since 2005.
“It’s very emotional because every year we hear stories about kids and that brings me back,” she said. “Unfortunately, some have different stories with sad endings and we’re just so appreciative of how far we’ve come.”
Seeing the support of the Terry Fox Run across Canada is overwhelming, Dempster-Bell said, and she thinks her family is a perfect example of how important that support can be to individuals.
“There’s so many people who need the assistance,” she said. “We had great support from our family and friends, but it’s people like Laurie that made a huge difference. People we had never met would hear our story and want to do something and want to come by and visit.
Dempster-Bell said that kindness of humanity is amazing and that the Newmarket Terry Fox Run made such a difference in her family’s life.
“When you’re really down, people step up and it makes such a difference getting through it,” she said. “Going through 10 months of chemo, you need to have people like that to help pull you through as a family to see the light at the end.”
Those strangers that Dempster-Bell and her family met through the Terry Fox Run have become so much more to them.
“There are people that I met through it that I’m still good friends with today that I wouldn’t have crossed paths with prior to it,” she said.
Sharing Maddie’s positive cancer story with others helps instil hope during tough times, Dempster-Bell says, hope that her family once needed.
“Hope helped us get through some of it, the Terry Fox Run gave us hope and helped us persevere,” Dempster-Bell said. “It gave us hope going through my dad and sister's treatment, it gives you hope in the tough times.”
This year’s Newmarket Terry Fox Run is set for Sunday, Sept. 17 starting at 9 a.m. at the Ray Twinney Recreation Complex on Eagle Street.
So far the Newmarket run has raised more than $42,800 with a fundraising goal of $70,000.
You can register for the run or donate online here.
