In 2010, McKenna Modler, then a 10-year-old, was devastated when her beloved grandmother died after a 18-month battle with cancer. Weeks later, McKenna’s headaches, which she had experienced for a few years, began getting worse. Doctors speculated that the headaches were as a result of her sorrow over her grandmother’s death. But the headaches didn’t go away, in fact they grew in frequency and intensity. McKenna and her parents made the round of specialists, but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Finally in November 2010 - 11 months after her grandmother’s death - an eye doctor discovered a mass pushing on her eye. She was given an MRI at Kingston General Hospital and then rushed by ambulance to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. There McKenna and her family received the bad news. Cancer. The little girl had a brain tumour and needed a shunt put in her head to relieve the pressure. In the months that followed while travelling between home in Lansdowne and hospitals in Kingston and Toronto, McKenna got to know other kids in the cancer wards and their families. She noticed the emotional and financial toll placed on the families of kids in similar situations and decided to do something to help. Thus, McKenna’s Dream was born, a charitable campaign that has so far raised $130,000 for the Children’s Cancer Fund Kingston.