It was a race to the finish at Montreal’s annual RBC Race for the Kids, but for Abby Dupuis-Monière, the journey began at just 10 days old. Abby was diagnosed with a rare condition called congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia. It can cause a severe deformity in the shinbone that can make it difficult to walk. At one point, mother Marie-Claude Monière says it left her daughter completely immobile. “She had something at her leg. So we went directly to Ste-Justine,” Abby’s mother says. At six years-old, Abby wears a leg brace to this day. After surgeries at ages one, four and five, she’s glad to have some relief. “We had a lot of struggle and a lot of appointments at the hospital. She had a lot of casts and it was up and down,” her mother says. As the ambassador for the seventh annual event, Abby set out to run a one-kilometre race - something she’d never done before. More than 3,000 people joined Abby at Montreal’s Gilles-Villeneuve circuit. The event raised more than $820,000 for Ste-Justine’s Hospital. RBC Race for the Kids has also raised more than $118 million for youth charities worldwide. Delphine Brodeur is the president and CEO of the Ste-Justine’s Hospital Foundation. She says the hospital relies heavily on philanthropy to meet growing demands. “We need to give hope to our children for the future, and that’s exactly what we’re giving them today,” she says. “We always think that [rare conditions] happen to others, but sometimes ‘others’ are us. [...] Abby just reminds us that can happen to our neighbor, to our own family and we all need to be here to support,” she tells CTV.
