$50,000 donation to ALS lab tugs at emotions

Thu, December 4, 2008


By DEBORA VAN BRENK



Heather Snell is proud -- "no joke," she says with a huge smile -- that her community work in Ayr won her the 2008 Ayr Head of the Year Award.

But she's proudest of her supporting cast, whose efforts last summer became a celebration yesterday of a donation for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Snell made sure each of the 30 friends in attendance, and the entire lab team, touched the $50,000 cheque before she presented it to Dr. Michael Strong, head of the ALS Lab at Robarts Research Institute.

"Dr. Strong, make haste slowly . . . and work to find a cure for ALS," she told him.

Some of her friends, who wore T-shirts with slogans of courage and love and hope, wept.




"By focusing on the love factor, we remain strong," she told them all.

Snell, 46, was diagnosed with the degenerative disease -- known as Lou Gehrig's disease -- little more than two years ago.

She, her family and friends responded by launching Heather's Hootenanny for Hope barn dance, which raised $40,000 in 2007.

The second Hootenanny, held in Paris, Ont., last August, promised to be even grander, until torrential rain began falling.

"I was secretly hoping for half a million (dollars) but when the rain started, I was frightened that no one would come," she said.

But they did. By the thousands.

And so did more than 200 volunteers, said long-time friend Libby Barrie.

They raised $60,000 -- $50,000 for the local lab and $10,000 to the ALS Society.

"When someone like Heather has done so much for the community . . . it's easy for people to want to give back," Barrie said. "She has got charisma and charm."

The disease has advanced to the point where Snell can no longer speak, except by typing into a laptop computer. This fall, she had to stop teaching piano and playing piano in her church.

But events such as yesterday's are more exhilarating than exhausting, she said.

"Many others are fighting every day to live with grace and dignity," she said.

Strong treated the entourage, who arrived en masse in a limo-bus, to a tutorial on the lab's ground-breaking work.

Snell and her friends are already planning for Hootenanny 3 next summer.

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