Christmas Miracle Story

Christmas Wish Takes Wing

BY RON CORBETT, OTTAWA SUN

FIRST POSTED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2009 06:53 AM EST |

This is a story about a Christmas present. It is also a story about children, although not in the normal way, with children being either the supplicants or the beneficiaries of some seasonal largesse.

In this Christmas story, to be honest, there is barely room for adults. It is grade-school children who play the major roles. Who push along the narrative. Who craft the ending.

All the children in the story attended Churchill Alternative School in Ottawa's west end. Many still do, although others have moved on to middle grades at various high schools.

Churchill Alternative School is part of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, with grades running from junior kindergarten to six, and this is a story about what happened there two Christmases ago.

Many of the children you are going to meet have wonderful names - Willow Sharpe, Aisha Jansen, Johan Westeind - and all play major roles, although to be fair and accurate there is one child at the centre of the story.

She is a nine-year-old girl named Anna MacDonald. We'll start with her.

- - -

Anna MacDonald was born in 1998 with Down syndrome. The second child of Mary Jansen and Al MacDonald, her parents had no warning of how their life was about to change. They learned of their daughter's medical condition in the delivery room.

Down syndrome, although it seems a strange thing to write, was only the beginning of Anna's troubles. She was also born with a congenital heart defect. At the age of eight months she had open-heart surgery.

Then, at the age of four, she was diagnosed with leukemia.

"It seemed to be one thing after another," remembers Al MacDonald, who works in the mapping division of Statistics Canada. "I had to go on a reduced workload, just so I could be there for Anna. Mary became a stay-at-home mom. It seemed we were always in the hospital."

The strange thing about Anna, though, was she never complained. When she lost her hair because of chemotherapy treatments - no complaints. When she was too ill to eat - no complaints.

In fact, Anna tended to celebrate even a bad day. She would organize tea parties with her nurses. Or plan exotic, sea-cruise vacations with other children in the cancer wing of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

In the autumn of 2006, with her cancer in remission, she was re-enrolled in Churchill Alternative School, where her older brother Duncan was a student.

No one who was at the school at the time will ever forget her arrival.

- - -

It will help with the rest of the story if you can conjure up a mental image of Anna MacDonald. Imagine a nine-year-old girl with a plump, full face. A constant smile. A voice that was singing as often as it was talking.

Now imagine confidence, a child without an ounce of self-doubt and definite views on how a day should proceed. All right, you may be getting there.

"I have seen Anna march onto a soccer (pitch) and get players to stop and help her with a play," says Lyne Filion, a special-education instructor at Churchill school.

"She would stop the game, and then she would tell the boys: 'I need you to be the squirrel. And I need you to be the prince.' What's more, the boys would do it."

The boys needed to help out at costume parties as well. And you better high-five her whenever you saw her in the hallway. No excuses, or she'd track you down.

The children at the school, even the youngest, were aware that Anna had Down syndrome and battled cancer in the past. Yet if there was anything patronizing about the way they treated her, no teacher ever saw it.

"She was Duncan MacDonald's little sister, and great fun to be around," is how Ray Kalynuk, a grade 5-6 teacher at Churchill, describes the children's attitude.

Anyway, she was a hard child to ignore, let's put it that way, and maybe that's why the next year, when school started again, she was missed right away.

The children heard that Anna's cancer had come back. That Duncan had been a perfect match for something called a bone marrow transplant, but the operation had not gone well.

They were still thinking of her, it turns out, when they attended a Remembrance Day Ceremony that autumn. And it was while learning about the horrors of war that the children first heard the story of the thousand cranes.

- - -

Sadako Sasaki was two years old, and living a mile from ground zero, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Japan in 1945. At the age of 10 she was diagnosed with leukemia.

Sasaki spent the last nine months of her life in hospital and during that time she heard a fable about a thousand cranes, a popular Asian myth that says a wish will be granted to any person who makes 1,000 paper cranes.

Inspired by the story, Sasaki started making majestic, multi-coloured birds in her hospital bed. She had completed 644 of the birds before dying on Oct. 25, 1955. There is now a statue to her in Hiroshima.

The children at Churchill Alternative School heard the story and later they discussed it. By all accounts it was two 11-year-old boys - Johan Westeind and Richard Terrion - who were the first to think of Anna.

"I remember thinking that Sadako had the same disease as Anna," says Terrion. "Then I started thinking, 'Maybe we should make 1,000 cranes for Anna."

Within five minutes every child in the class had started folding paper.

- - -

The children take over the story at this point. Just take it over.

Within days, every classroom at Churchill Alternative School was making origami birds. The children worked day and night. Homework was origami. Recess was origami. The thing you did before you went to bed at night, or worked on your Christmas list, was origami.

"I remember doing nothing but folding paper that Christmas," says Willow Sharpe. "Once we started, we couldn't stop."

The teachers at Churchill watched the frenzied arts and crafts activity with amazement, but also some concern.

"A lot of boys were involved in this," remembers Kalynuk. "I kept waiting for them to lose interest. I mean, these were hockey-playing, rough-and-tumble boys we're talking about, and yet here they were folding coloured paper any chance they got."

It's not quick work, by the way, making 1,000 paper cranes. Before long the children had conscripted siblings and parents in the task. After that, anyone who had a few spare minutes and was lurking in the vicinity. They did, after all, have a goal in mind.

And sure enough, they pulled it off. They made 1,000 paper cranes. To give to Anna MacDonald as a present. So one wish could be granted her.

The present was given to her six days before Christmas.

- - -

The story goes in different directions here. After making 1,000 paper cranes, then fashioning them into two mobiles - one for Anna to take home, one to hang in the foyer at Churchill Alternative School - the children never saw Anna again.

They gave her the present during a special ceremony at the school, then went home for Christmas. Anna did the same.

In the new year, when the children returned, they thought little of Anna's absence. It was now a regular part of their school routine, and only occasionally did they remember the impromptu plays and the hallway high fives.

Yet they were shocked to learn, on Feb. 24, 2008, that Anna MacDonald had passed away. She had battled three bouts of cancer. Survived open-heart surgery. But in the end it was a stroke, a complication from the medical treatment she was receiving, that killed her.

Children who had spent an entire Christmas season folding pieces of paper and hoping that wishes do come true were devastated. Willow Sharpe remembers being "sadder than I thought possible." Richard Terrion remembers thinking "nothing should be that unfair."

The young girl's funeral was better attended than that of a celebrity politician. Hundreds assembled at the Unitarian church in Westboro to remember a remarkable life. Her dance troupe performed a number choreographed especially for her. Children from Churchill sang her favourite songs.

She is buried now in a small cemetery at Pinhey's Point, one of the most beautiful and rugged spots in the region, a place where the Ottawa River rumbles beneath steep hills that once attracted an English lord who made a doomed attempt to build a grand empire.

Anna MacDonald was nine years of age.

- - -

So what to make of it? The question seems to hang in the air, as I sit in a living room with Al MacDonald, talking about a thousand paper cranes that were once given to his daughter as a present.

Did anyone feel disappointed? Did anyone think a wish had not been granted? I can't help but wonder about it, as I sit through a painful interview with a man still struggling to understand life and why his daughter is no longer part of it.

His son still has trouble dealing with his sister's death, he tells me at one point. His wife is too distraught to be here. He's keeping things together as best he can. It's day by day.

But he did want to talk about the 1,000 cranes. He tells me this without any prompting. I haven't yet asked a question about the present.

"My wife has thought about this a lot," says MacDonald. "And we do want the children to know what they did for us for that Christmas."

"Yes," I say, "It was a wonderful present."

"No," says MacDonald, "I don't mean that ... You know, it's a funny thing, and you can never be completely sure about any of these things, but Anna had a doctor's appointment the day after the cranes were given to her."

He pauses a minute. Looks around his living room. There is a Christmas tree framed against a front window. In the opposite corner is the mobile given to Anna to bring home. The birds are flying over my head.

In remission

"Funny thing was, her cancer was in remission during that appointment," MacDonald continues. "As sick as she was, she was in great health that Christmas. It was probably the best Christmas she ever had.

"That's a strange thing, don't you think?"

We spend the next hour looking at photos taken of Anna that Christmas. A young girl ripping apart wrapping paper. Posing with her cousin. Not a care in the world, or so it would appear. So maybe, just maybe, a wish did come true. In Ottawa two years ago. A Christmas wish.

Granted by a great many children. And 1,000 paper cranes.