National Honouring Canada's Lifeline

Honouring Canada’s Lifeline (HCL) is an annual, national event recognizing some of the country’s most dedicated people at the heart of Canada’s Lifeline.

Each year, it takes hundreds of thousands of blood donors, stem cell donors, organ and tissue donors, financial donors, employees and volunteers — as well as thousands of community and corporate groups and partners — to save the lives of patients across Canada. Honouring Canada’s Lifeline is our opportunity to recognize the many contributors along that path.

Honouring Canada's Lifeline Live Event

This year, we celebrated virtually with special guest host Heather Badenoch and musical guests Kalsey Kulyk and Donovan Woods. We hope you enjoy this story about the power of connections: from blood and plasma, to stem cells, and organs and tissues.

To learn more about how you can strengthen Canada’s Lifeline by becoming a donor of blood, plasma, stem cells, organs and tissues or how to become a financial donor, community partner or volunteer please read more on blood.ca or call 1 888 2 DONATE.

Trusting that we can all be part of the connection that keeps the story going: together, we are Canada's Lifeline.

Heather Badenoch

Master of Ceremonies

Heather had originally applied to be a living liver donor for a specific child near Ottawa, who had made a public plea for a donor in 2016. Fortunately, that child found a match and had a successful transplant. Heather asked to remain in the screening process for anyone else in need.

Parmeet Kahlon

Peer Recruiter

While earning a nursing degree from Toronto’s Ryerson University, Parmeet began to raise awareness of the need for donations of blood, plasma, platelets and organs.

Cheryl’s Run

Peer Recruiter

Norma and her sister Colette Bachez learned the importance of donation in the hardest way possible. A niece of theirs, Cheryl Lynn Boyle, needed countless blood transfusions and a bone marrow transplant to treat aplastic anemia, a rare and often fatal condition.

Deborah Skaey

Peer Recruiter

Deborah Skaey coordinates an annual donor event at her workplace, BC RCMP headquarters. During the last seven years, the event has collected a total of more than 700 units of whole blood.

Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency

Partner

Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency (HRFE) continues to increase the support it provides to Canadian Blood Services. Much of the credit goes to current captain Annette Thompson, hired as a firefighter in 2007.

Vancouver Police Department

Partner

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is a longtime participant in the Partners for Life program, promoting the importance of donating blood through social media and hosting a variety of on-site events.

Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association

Partner

“We’ve partnered with Canadian Blood Services for more than a decade and our members are proud to do whatever they can to help,” says Qamar Ahmad, social services director for Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association (AMYA), Calgary Region.

York Regional Police

Partner

YRP’s engagement with Canadian Blood Services takes many forms. In 2011, YRP detective Ashley Smith organized a blood donor event in honour of constable Garrett Styles, who died while on duty. It’s since become an annual event.

Sikh Nation

National Partner

For more than 20 years, Sikh Nation has partnered with Canadian Blood Services in a series of annual donation events in several provinces across the country.

Hedy Halpern

Volunteer

A volunteer all of her life, Hedy Halpern helped Vietnamese refugees settle in and around Montreal in the 1970s. Over the years, she’s also given her time and efforts to numerous youth groups and community theatre companies.

Stephen Gregg

Volunteer

A longtime blood donor who’s completed more than 150 donations, Stephen is also a professional photographer who’s started to think about retirement.

Americo Silva

Volunteer

Americo has enjoyed a storied life. Born in Portugal, he immigrated in 1967, Canada’s centennial year. He settled in Vancouver, where he unexpectedly met someone from his home village — a woman who used to play with his younger sister.

Razia Seman

Volunteer

Razia to begin volunteering for Canadian Blood Services in 2019, initially at recruitment events and then at blood donor clinics.

Quinn Bleakley

Donor

When Quinn learned that her father needed a kidney transplant, she immediately offered to donate one of hers.

Michelle Dunn

Blood Donor

“Every time I’m asked for a unit of whole blood, I’m reminded of the importance of blood donation,” says Michelle Dunn, a medical laboratory technologist at Chilliwack Hospital.

Cori-Jo Heggie

Blood Donor

A high school teacher born and raised in Lethbridge, Alta., Cori-Jo first donated blood as a teenager. She’s completed 95 more donations since then and regularly encourages others, particularly first-timers, to join her.

Robert Sanford

Blood Donor

Robert has completed a total of 805 donations of whole blood, plasma and platelets, and he is also registered to donate stem cells.

Palmo Carpino

Plasma Donor

Palmo began donating whole blood in 1988. A friend who was a regular donor invited him to come along for one of her appointments.

Melissa Deleary

Stem Cell Donor

Melissa Deleary, a health policy analyst with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, is both Dene and Anishinaabe.

Susan Nguyen

Stem Cell Donor

Susan’s youngest brother, Bille Nguyen, had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive blood cancer several months earlier. Doctors said his only hope was a stem cell transplant. Susan and her two sisters had hoped one of them could be a donor, but the doctors were not initially optimistic, in part because only 25 per cent of patients find a match within their own families.

Jessica Thomas

Cord Blood Donor

Jessica Thomas is also a blood donor, stem cell registrant, financial supporter and philanthropic ambassador for Canadian Blood Services. In 2011, the Campaign for All Canadians raised more than $12.5 million from financial donors across the country to establish a national public cord blood bank.

The Bulger family

The Schilly Award

Sharon’s son Cameron was just nine years old when he died of a rare brain cancer in May 2020. The Bulger family is receiving this year’s Schilly Award, which honours a person or group who has contributed significantly to donor recruitment or public awareness of the need for blood, stem cells, or organs and tissues.

Heydan Morrison and family

Recipient Speaker

Heydan Morrison, now nine, has relied on immunoglobulin — a medication derived from donated plasma — since he was five years old. His mother, Shannon, expects he’ll need it for the rest of his life to treat a rare immune disorder called hypogammaglobulinemia.