The pillar project of Maplewishes.
This project is close to our hearts and the foundation upon which MapleWishes was built.
Parkinson's disease affects all sorts of great people like Mohammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, and our grandfather, Francis Mathew ♥.
Our grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2009. In 2015, Rowan decided that she wanted to raise awareness about Parkinson's at our school. She decided, that year, to make 120 Rainbow Loom bracelets for the girls and staff at her school. Since then, she has annually crafted and distributed an assortment of tokens for the 450+ students and staff of our school, including magnets (2016 & 2020), bookmarks (2018), and keychains (2017 & 2019). Each item bears a butterfly - a symbol of hope inspired by Muhammad Ali’s quote “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”.
Our dad has been participating in the "Lap the Gats" bike race since its inception in 2014. The proceeds of this annual fundraising event go towards supporting Parkinson's research at the Ottawa Hospital - The Parkinson Research Consortium - under the auspice of Dr. David Grimes and Dr. Michael Schlossmacher. We decided to support our dad and the research endeavor by raising money with the sale of Rowan's butterfly tokens. To date we have raised over $65,000 dollars!
Postponed to 2021-2022, pandemic permitting, we will be continuing our fundraising ventures with a trek to the top of Kilimanjaro, in honour of our grandfather and in support of The Parkinsons Research Consortium and the University of Ottawa Brain and Mind Institute.
READ MORE about "The Butterfly Project - Kilimanjaro".