Twelve-year-old Mason Donkin and his family are gearing up in preparation for the sixth annual Walk for Chiari, a fundraiser in town benefiting Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, this Saturday, July 20.
The walk follows a roughly one-kilometre loop starting at the Bradford and District Memorial Community Centre at 125 Simcoe Rd., which heads north on Simcoe, east on Holland Street East, south on Bingham Street, and west on Centre Street before turning south on Williams Street and coming back to the community centre.
Mason’s parents have been organizing the event in town since 2017, with a pause in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Mason said the support he’s seen from the community makes him “really happy,” especially watching so many people come together to volunteer, donate and participate.
“It’s basically raising awareness while having fun,” he said. “Chiari isn’t well known.”
This year’s event is expected to include music, games, face painting, arts and crafts, a barbecue, an ice-cream truck, local firefighters, the Bradford Wolves Soccer Club, fun with Genesis Gymnastics, plus a guest speaker from the SickKids Foundation.
In addition to vendors, guests can also expect a raffle for a bicycle, plus a silent auction featuring more than 50 gift cards and more than 90 items from various businesses both locally and as far away as Toronto and Niagara Falls, ranging from AirPods to gaming devices and even a signed jersey from Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander.
The Donkin family is hoping to raise a total of $100,000 inclusive with previous years and have already raised more than $80,000 total, including more than $6,000 since mother Jennifer Donkin launched this year’s campaign in January.
Having that support “feels amazing,” for Jennifer.
“We never imagined it being this successful,” she said. “It just makes you feel like you’re not alone, like everybody wants to help ... make the event successful year in and year out.”
After several years of testing, in 2016 when he was four years old, doctors diagnosed Mason with Chiari malformation (CM), which is a condition where part of the brain bulges through a normal opening in the back of the skull where it joins the spinal canal.
According SickKids Foundation, this puts pressure on parts of the brain and spinal cord, and can cause mild to severe symptoms. They say research shows that CM occurs in only about one in 1,000 births.
Jennifer explained the family began running the event to support SickKids, bring attention to the issue and connect families dealing with CM.
“The importance is huge in spreading the awareness of Chiari,” she said.
This year, the family is also in the process of organizing their move to a new home, but Jennifer explained that new location would still be here in Bradford.
“This is where we belong and the community involvement that we get and the support that we get is something we couldn’t be apart from,” she said.
In addition to raising awareness locally, in 2019 Mason joined the SickKids Foundation’s ambassador program, through which individuals and families share their stories for fundraising purposes. It has seen Mason featured on billboards and in commercials.
“I like that I get to help all the other kids in the hospital,” he said.
For more than a year now, MRIs have shown Mason’s CM as stable, but he still required a surgery in March after a “massive” growth spurt saw him shoot up almost 10 centimetres within one year, which led to complications with connections for an implant.
Fortunately, Jennifer said there were no complications with the surgery and Mason recovered without issue, save for needing some new outfits.
Being in the hospital and seeing the important work of staff inspires the family even more in their fundraising efforts, according to Jennifer.
“We see the quality of life for Mason improve greatly with the care that he receives from there,” she said. “It’s one of the places that you don’t want to be, but it’s also one of the best places to be if you need.”
For more information, visit fundraise.sickkidsfoundation.com/walkforchiari or email [email protected].
