INNISFAIL – Over the past 36 years Mark Kemball’s Dairy Queen on Innisfail’s Main Street has raised more than $260,000 from the annual Miracle Treat Day to improve the lives of children receiving essential health care in the community.
On Aug. 14, five-year-old Charlee McKendry arrived at the Innisfail Dairy Queen with her mother Kelsey to celebrate the restaurant’s Miracle Treat Day with heartfelt gratitude.
Excited to be among adoring family members, Charlee is living proof of a miracle.
She was born with half a heart from a condition known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome and needed expert medical support for her entire young life.
“I knew about it when I was pregnant. There was no hope that it would magically fix itself when I was pregnant,” said Kelsey, who resides on an acreage five kilometres south of Bowden. “It's one of those conditions that generally doesn’t have an actual cause. It's just something that happens.
“But on the anatomy scans they could clearly see she only had half of a heart. One side was not developing,” she said, adding her daughter still has only half a heart but through expert treatment she is a happy young child.
“She really is. She’s something else,” said the beaming mom. “She's had three open heart surgeries now, just to kind of change the flow through her arteries. They changed how her heart is piped to her lungs and to her body just to make it work.”
The lifesaving expert work to keep Charlee alive, happy, and healthy is due to the expert medical help she has received from birth.
And Dairy Queen outlets across Canada and the United States have supported that need by raising more $185 million over the past 23 years for local hospitals in the United States and Canada.
“We have supported the Children’s Miracle Network, which in Alberta supports the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary and the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton,” said Kemball, adding he expects his restaurant to raise about $15,000 this year from the net proceeds of every Blizzard sold during Miracle Treat Day.
Kemball said the money his restaurant raised will go directly to Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary.
“We have supported this cause for the entire 36 years we have owned the store,” he said.
Through its long-standing partnership with Children’s Miracle Network (CMN), Dairy Queen has raised more than $55 million through Miracle Treat Day and other year-round fundraising initiatives across Canada.
Every dollar donated from Canadian Dairy Queen locations goes directly toward funding cutting-edge medical research, innovative treatments and comforting, and child-focused healing environments.
“Our money goes directly to research equipment. It goes right into the hospital,” said Kemball. “To give back to families is absolutely paramount for us.”
And for all of that, Kelsey is forever grateful.
“The reality is without days like this, without the advancements that days like this are able to provide to the hospitals, I wouldn't be in the same situation I am today,” said Kelsey. “My daughter likely would not be doing nearly as well.
“She might not even be with us today if it wasn't for the funding that Miracle Treat Day is able to help provide, to help further advance the medical field and the equipment and the research and everything that goes into it.
“I literally cannot put into words how thankful I am for days like today.”
