Stella the Superhero – Variety girl helps launch Sun Christmas Fund

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We all confront a Mount Everest in our lives. Kids with disabilities often face the whole Himalayas.

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For instance, there was a little girl with a big name, Stella Leblanc-Beaudoin, at the Sun Christmas Fund official launch at Variety Village the other night.

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I told you a bit about Stella two years ago, when she was seven. She has Down syndrome. She had jut climbed her own Mount Everest, the daunting rock wall in the Village’s fieldhouse, after several attempts.

Well, I’m happy to report Stella, now nine, is still scaling new heights. At her side, as always, is faithful – and wise-cracking – little brother Leo, 6.

Their mom, Christina Guzzo, a U of T scientist, this week explained Stella’s formula for success.

“So, Stella, tell Mike what you do when you’re nervous.”

Leo: “Panic! Run around, run around!”

Mom: “Leo! Stella, what do you do?”

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Stella: “Be brave.”

Mom: “And then?”

Stella: “Be proud.”

A sound mantra for all of us. Especially apt for Stella, who has had to be brave for surgeries, including open-heart, and who now travels a world that is not always kind.

“As she gets older, I can tell she knows she’s different,” says her mom. “She knows how the world works. She knows when people talk down to her. Or when they don’t think she can do something.”

Those doubters should have seen Stella at Sick Kids last month, waltzing into the operating room like she owned the joint.

“I’m checking in for the night,” she announced in her gravelly little-girl voice. “Excited to be here. Room service!”

The anesthesiologist stared and asked, “Did we already give her something?”

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“Nope,” said Christina. “That’s just Stella.”

Then they put the kid under and removed her adenoid glands and some nasal tissue, to ease her breathing, a common marker of Down syndrome.

Later, when “room service” arrived, Stella ordered everything with the word chocolate in it.

“She does this with every surgery,” says her wondering mom.

Next up is a tear duct op, to curb repeated eye infections.

See? Some kids face more than their share of Mount Everests.

They’re not all medical, either.

At the Sun Christmas Fund launch, Christina told of a scare with Stella at a lakeside cottage. The toddler fell face-first in shallow water and was unable to lift herself out. Her mom and dad – paramedic Tommy Leblanc-Beaudoin – rushed to her in time.

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Shaken, they arranged swim lessons at Variety Village. Staff there spotted Stella bravely splashing about and suggested she join the synchro swim team.

Now she’s a provincial medallist in adaptive synchro and is practising for a duet at the annual Christmas show in the Variety pool.

The nervous part is that first dive to start the routine.

“I have to be brave,” she says.

Not all Mount Everests are tall and rocky. Some are made of paper. Reading is tricky for a kid with Down syndrome. So, while Leo trots off to Variety’s famous taekwondo classes, Stella settles in with a reading tutor.

Pick of the day is Stella the Superhero, one of those customized kids’ books, a gift of her grandparents. In it, the title character rescues a cat from a tree, fixes a flat tire with bubble gum and saves kids in a pool. She has glasses like our Stella’s and shares her taste for purple clothes.

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“I feel like I’m in this book,” says Stella.

Says her mom: “I keep seeing her face challenges that seem impossible and she overcomes them. Will she ever swim? Well, now she’s in synchro. Will she ever read? Well, now she reads.”

Says Leo: “I want my sister to be able to do everything. Everything! I wish she could run so, so fast and jump so, so high. I just want it to be easier for her.”

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OFF AND RUNNING

“Everyone at Variety Village has faith in her,” says Stella’s mom, Christina Guzzo. “This place recognizes and gives us glimpses into her potential.”

How fitting, then, that the theme of this year’s Sun Christmas Fund for Variety Village is “the gift of possibility.”

Our readers get it, including these first donors in our campaign to support Toronto’s iconic sports centre geared to kids with disabilities. You can join them, at sunchristmasfund.ca.

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Peter Maik, Etobicoke, $1,000

Michelle Meawasige, Scarborough, $100

Sandra Ireland, Toronto, $2,000

Leigh Bryant, Toronto, $60

Gerard Baribeau, Scarborough, $1,000

Ursula Sortwell, Scarborough, $50

Lynda Sullivan, Scarborough, $500

Elio Rea, Richmond Hill, $100

Dance Karapalevski, Toronto, $100

Bryan Kelly, Toronto, $200

Katherine Henderson, Toronto, $500

Elizabeth and Brian McGarva, Scarborough, $100

Piotr Wilczynski, Poland, $30

Brian Gonzales, Scarborough, $100

John Cardinal, Belleville, $50

Andrew Bilicki, Toronto, $112

Lorna & Bob Chega, Scarborough, $50 in memory of a wonderful neighbour, Maria Raponi

Patricia Yaccato, Scarborough, $200

Barry Pound, Scarborough, $25

Bernadette Rennie, Lindsay, $75

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Robin and Ria Searle, Oakville, $100

Timothy Murray, Pickering, $100

Richard Booth, Toronto, $200

Marilyn Tannahill, Toronto, $40

Douglas Maunder, Scarborough, $100

Boguslaw Hass, Poland, $100 in honour of Franek and Henio

Robert Fleischman, Toronto, $250

Vince Fraser, Niagara Falls, $100

JoAnn Shaw, Toronto, $50

Eva Smillie, Scarborough, $50

Nicole Downes, Pickering, $20

Frederick Middleton, Scarborough, $50

Janet Borland, Mississauga, $150

Iwona Hass, Poland, $100

Lucy Fowler, Brampton, $100

Frances Forbes, Toronto, $50

Jack Arbus, York, $85

John & Sandra Weddell, Newmarket, $50

Mary Cseledes, Toronto, $100

Canadian Foundation for Physically Disabled Persons, Toronto, $3,000

Robert Onyskiw, Etobicoke, $100

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Ted Dulny, Oshawa, $25

Carole Woolway, Barrie, $50

Wilma Leigh, Oshawa, $100

Ken Moores, Toronto, $25

Andrew Evinou, Oshawa, $25

Paul Whitely, Wyoming, $50

Louis Hambrock, East York, $1,000

Karlene Clustie, Scarborough, $300

Brian MacInnis, Scarborough, $200

Donna Stefoff, Thornhill, $25

John & Marilyn Howse, East York, $30

Frank Spiteri, Toronto, $100

Frederick Pratt, Scarborough, $500

Margaret MacNeil, North York, $100

George Binns, Scarborough, $200

Irene Clarke, Woodbridge, $100

Erica Kerr, Scarborough, $50

Trudy Alphonse, Toronto, $20

Mario Perek, Holland Landing, $250

Patricia Moores, Woodbridge, $50

Debbie Forrester, Scarborough, $25

Michael Somer, Thornhill, $25

Vaughan Grater, Weston, $100

Marlisa Mercer, Orillia, $80

Bob & Anita Mitchell, Etobicoke, $200 in memory of son Timothy.

Arlene Adams, Aurora, $300

James Petrozzi, New Hamburg, $300

VIKING CAT – Saga of Tulip the Brave on Manitoulin Island book sales, $1,046

TOTAL TO DATE: $16,523

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