With the help of the community, the Donkin family have successfully completed the sixth annual Walk for Chiari which this year raised $14,552.55 for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
Parents Frank and Jennifer Donkin have been organizing the event in Bradford since 2017 (with a pause in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) after their son Mason, 12, was diagnosed with Chiari malformation (CM) in 2016 when he was just four years old.
CM 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.
Jennifer estimated almost 80 people attended this year’s walk, which followed a roughly one-kilometre loop starting and ending at the Bradford and District Memorial Community Centre on July 20, and also included music, games, face painting, arts and crafts, a barbecue, an ice-cream truck, a raffle for a bicycle, plus a silent auction.
Jennifer said the community has helped the family raise more than $92,136 inclusive of previous years.
“It’s truly amazing to feel and see the numbers grow every year,” she said.
Due to the construction of Celebration Square, this year’s event had to be moved from its regular location outside the Bradford West Gwillimbury Public Library, which had Jennifer “a little bit worried,” it would be harder to find, but she said they still had “a great turnout.”
“The day of was really great. We had a lot of volunteers who came out to help,” she said.
For the first time, Jennifer said participants included five families from other parts of the province as far away as Napanee and London who also have members diagnosed with CM.
“It was truly overwhelming the sense of connection that we had,” she said.
Even though the event didn’t hit this year’s individual goal of raising $20,000, the ability to spread awareness and support others with the condition “speaks more volumes to me than the actual money raised,” Jennifer said.
She was happy to answer questions from those families about the walk and how it started and even happier to hear that many of them plan to spread awareness in their own communities and encourage people to visit Bradford in support of the event in future years.
That could mean much bigger crowds and the family is already planning for next year with a tentative date for July yet to be confirmed, when Jennifer is hoping everyone will be able to gather back at the library.
Already, she said sponsors have been reaching out to pledge support for 2025.
“It just makes us feel that our vision for the event is being heard, and people want to support that,” she said.
This year’s event also included support from the local firefighters, the Bradford Wolves Soccer Club, Genesis Gymnastics, local police, the mayor and members of council, plus local vendors including North Trail Design Co. as well as Daisy and Baloo.
