Cancer is an unapologetic thief, stealing lives without discrimination. Every one of us has been impacted by it to some degree—including our children. But some local kids are turning their own stories of loss into hope. Today we tell the story of Christian Harder.
Christian Harder may be only seven years old, but he’s already a mighty little man with a big heart—a heart that was forever changed when he lost his father to cancer five years ago.
Visiting the Harders’ Niverville home, you’ll find pictures of their beloved dad and husband in every corner of the house. As I sat poised to undertake an interview with this busy young man, he was compelled, first, to surround me with every Dad photo he could find.
“My dad got cancer… and when I was two years old he died,” Christian explains. “His name is Earl.”
Christian’s mother, Sharon, says her young son doesn’t have a lot of memories of his dad, but he loves to be reminded that he was “Daddy’s little boy.” It was her idea to get her son invested in his father’s memory by setting up a table for him at the family garage sale where he could sell bracelets and cookies to raise money for cancer research.
“They sold out really fast,” says Sharon. “All together, and with the addition of other donations that people dropped off with him, it was $432.80.”
She says she was proud of her generally shy young boy, who boldly welcomed visiting garage salers to make a purchase for his cause. So impressed were the strangers that donations continued to flow in during the week after the sale.
Together, Sharon, Christian, and his sister Vanessa paid a visit to the Health Science Centre’s cancer care facility to present the money. There, hospital staff presented Christian with a giant cheque to signify the important donation.
“Cancer Care is a very long way [from home],” says Christian. “It’s right by the hotel where we went for a sleep with my best sister.”
In fact, it’s his sister Vanessa who provided the bracelets that Christian would sell. In her Grade 12 year at Niverville Collegiate, Vanessa took on a global awareness project, choosing cancer research as her charity of choice. She made an online order of 300 custom-stamped bracelets, emblazoned with the motto “No One Fights Alone.”
“Originally, when we were organizing and getting [the garage sale] ready, we found a bunch of bracelets leftover from Vanessa’s school project,” says Sharon. “I said to Christian, ‘What do you think? Do you want to try and sell them?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ I don’t know if he 100 percent understood, but he was very gung ho.”
Without question, Christian’s father would be proud, too. Earl Harder’s cancer journey began with a sore throat and pain when he swallowed. Physician consultations led him to believe that he had an ulcer and medications were prescribed accordingly. But the symptoms didn’t pass.
As the pain grew, the family sought out further medical help.
This time, tests revealed a five-centimetre tumour on his esophagus. Biopsy results revealed that the disease had already spread to his lymph nodes and spots were also detected in his lung and liver. The advanced stage-four diagnosis sent him straight into palliative care.
Earl followed through with the recommended radiation and chemotherapy treatments in an attempt to prolong his life. He lasted six months and died on February 27, 2014 at the age of 42. It was just three weeks after young Christian’s second birthday.