K.C. Jordan, LJI Journalist
Kendyl Smith-Trimm was about as happy as a kid can get.
Her curly blonde hair and smile could always light up a room, said her mom, Cheryl Smith.
Kendyl was curious and loved adventures, especially at their family cottage. The young girl loved exploring the shoreline and finding rocks and other treasures along the way.
She loved animals of all shapes and sizes, whether it was their family dog, the cows on her uncle’s farm in Chichester, or the cat she convinced her parents to get.
But in Feb. 2022 seven-year old Kendyl started having sporadic soreness in her leg. At first, her parents thought it was just growing pains, but after getting a referral to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) they discovered it was actually something far more severe: osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer.
After a long battle with the disease, Kendyl passed away in August of 2023. Now, her family is holding a fundraiser in their late daughter’s memory, hoping to help kids in similar situations.
Once they discovered the cancer in Kendyl’s leg, they started her on chemotherapy at CHEO.
During that time, her parents had to tell their little girl that her thick, curly blonde hair would likely fall out due to the powerful chemotherapy medicines.
“Your heart broke to have to tell her that, but she took it well,” said Smith.
Kendyl handled the situation with her trademark brand of creativity and humour.
“We had to cut a lot of it off, and she took her hair and she made this hairball out of it. And she put googly eyes and a smile and said, ‘meet Harry, my hairball.’ That was her way of coping with it.”
After 10 weeks of chemotherapy, they hoped the tumour in her leg would have gotten smaller. To their dismay, the tumour had actually grown in size, and Kendyl had grown two additional tumours, one under each shoulder.
The family tried putting their daughter on another round of chemotherapy, an experimental drug, even an oral version of chemotherapy — whatever they could do to slow this thing down.
But there still wasn’t any improvement. Slowly, they realized there was no stopping it. The cancer was taking over her body.
After all this treatment, Kendyl needed a break, so the family took a vacation to southern Ontario to see family and visit Niagara Falls.
When they returned home, the focus was on minimizing the pain as much as possible. Kendyl spent a week in a hospice before returning home, where a nurse came to take care of her, with help from her family and CHEO palliative care doctors, until her final days.
Kendyl passed away on Aug. 14, 2023 at the age of 8.
Even through all the pain, her mom said Kendyl showed remarkable selflessness.
“I want to open a toy store when I grow up,” she said on a trip back home from CHEO one day.
“And all the money I make, I’m going to give it back to CHEO, because those kids need money to get better.”
Smith said this generosity represents exactly who Kendyl was.
“If we went out to Walmart for something, she would want to buy someone else something [ . . . ]
She was a very, very thoughtful and caring child.”
Now, Kendyl’s family is organizing this fundraiser to honour their daughter and continue her legacy.
“She is the inspiration behind it and we’re kind of just following through on what we feel she wanted,” said Smith.
The money raised will go toward an endowment fund at CHEO to help children and families in need, whether it be for transportation, food, lodging, or even just a toy.
With some of the money, the family wants to buy gift cards from the CHEO gift shop, as a way to keep the kids’ focus away from the medical procedures.
Smith said Kendyl always looked forward to getting toys from the gift shop. Over time, she amassed quite an extensive collection of fuzzy sloths, even putting on an entire sloth wedding in their living room.
“It really helped her to focus on something more positive rather than focusing on getting blood work done, the needle and all that,” she said.
Now, her family hopes to do the same thing for other kids.
Half of the money raised will go toward the Child Life program at CHEO, a program that strives to make childrens’ experiences at the hospital as positive as possible, and one that Kendyl herself benefitted from.
“They build these really trusting relationships with the kids. If they have to go in for bloodwork, one of the Child Life workers will go in as well, and they’ll have an iPad to look at,” said Smith.
“It’s a very healthy distraction, but it just takes a lot of the child’s mind off of the very intrusive medical procedures they’re having. She loved it [ . . . ] It’s a very, very important program.”
Smith has been canvassing businesses in Ontario and Quebec for donations, and has had great success, receiving thousands of dollars of money and merchandise for the cause.
But some days, the prospect of going out and talking about her daughter is simply too much, and she doesn’t want to go. But then she thinks of her daughter, and she forces herself to get out there.
“In the back of my head, Kendyl didn’t want to go to CHEO, get picked and prodded either, but she did,” Smith tells herself.
“So get your ass off the couch, you’re going. She’s inspired me with her strength and courage. And she was so generous and giving.”
Smith has been amazed by the community support.
“Like, we have got monetary donations to help cover costs of the event, we’ve gotten so many gift certificates from local businesses,” she said.