Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
Hay Rive (May 14/01) - Each year Hay River residents witness the Christmas miracle of giving through the selfless work performed by Edna Dow and her growing legion of little helpers.
Dow championed the now highly-successful Secret Santa program that provides gifts and groceries to the less fortunate over Christmas. She says the gift of giving is a result of a few miracles in her life, but charity began in her childhood home in Hay River's Old Town.
"Everyone was equal back then," Edna recalled. "We just shared...people would just stop by and cut wood for you."
Growing up she remembered how her mother used to buy butter on rare occasions, but the children were never allowed to taste the precious condiment.
"One day my mom was packing up a parcel of food for one of the neighbours and she put in half-a-pound of butter," she remembered and smiled. "I thought, 'Why is she giving them butter when we can't even have it?'"
"But that's the thing I like about Hay River; it takes a lot of work, but when people get interested with something they really go," she said.
While she grew up with giving and receiving, it wasn't until she suffered a massive stroke and underwent two brain surgeries, that Edna was instilled with the spirit of giving.
"I walked out right where that chair is, and that was it. I don't remember anything for two weeks after that," she said. "I woke up in Edmonton."
"I should have died; the surgeon told me so."
While she was in hospital recovering, her children were at home in Hay River, but arrangements were made to fly the kids to Edmonton. On returning home, the Dows were overwhelmed with gifts of flowers, cards and food that flowed through their door.
"People brought cooked food, bags of groceries and even Eggos -- I mean, I don't even buy that fancy kind of stuff, I make my own," she laughed. "It was incredible. Pretty soon my whole counter was full and then the table was all full."
It was Christmas Eve and the gifts kept coming when Edna's son Vincent suggested they start to give the things away. The family began to package and re-package the gifts and groceries.
"Vincent opened one of the boxes and said, 'Hey mom! Look -- real juice,'" she recalled laughing. "We always used the powders juice, but we put one in each box where there was a family with little ones."
Vincent took the boxes from door to door to needy families on his toboggan and had returned home from what he thought was his last delivery, but mom had to send him back out.
"I said, 'While you were gone four more boxes showed-up,'" she said. "He was beat and we still hadn't wrapped our own gifts."
"He said, 'Mom, I guess it's really true what it says in the bible, that you can't out-give God."
"It was an awesome evening."
The Dow family wasn't through living real-life miracles however. Edna's youngest child Heather was stricken with leukemia at ten-years-old.
"The doctor told us she wasn't going to live," she recalled. "I said, 'No. I don't believe she's going to die.'"
Spending hour after hour at her daughter's bedside, Edna began to see her child's life slipping away under weeks of massive therapy.
"I'm a Christian and I believe children are on loan to us," she said. "It got very tiring going there and not eating and staying for 10 hours a day."
Regarded as terminal, Heather was bombarded with chemotherapy and drugs to ease the pain. Edna began to believe that God was foreclosing on her loan.
"I got mad and I said to the Lord, 'Okay, you want her, you take her.' And I meant it," she said flatly.
She then told God she was going to go have a cigarette and speak with sick people outside the hospital. When Edna returned an hour later, doctors and nurses were rushing in and out of Heather's room.
"I thought I was getting my answer -- that God was taking her."
She asked one of the nurses what was going on and the replied that they were taking Heather down for blood work, because there "was something very strange with her blood."
"I asked what was wrong and the nurse said, 'Well it's normal.'"
While Heather was never expected to live, but the cancer disappeared. And because of the massive chemotherapy, she was never expected to grow. She proved them all wrong and is happy and healthy today.
"To this day the doctor calls her 'his miracle child,'" Edna said with a smile. "She should have all kinds of disorders and things wrong with her insides and her heart murmur is gone -- she's taller than I am."
"When you experience all these things, it shows you just how short life is, so why not live life to the fullest and appreciate the things and people who are here," she said. "We choose how to live and I choose to give."
