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By Andrew Livingstone
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, January 22, 2009

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Janet Naskathey has sent about 3,000 teddy bears to remote Northern communities over the past eight Christmases. This year, despite being in the midst of her second bout with cancer, she delivered another 55 of them to Stanton Territorial Hospital lask week.

In 2000, the Yellowknife resident was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through treatments to beat it.

Janet Naskathey, left, and nurses Theresa Lebrun and Vivian-Lei Silverio show off some teddy bears donated by Naskathey to the pediatrics ward at the Stanton Regional Hospital last Thursday. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

"It was a really difficult time," she said. "It was very much a struggle."

That's when her friends delivered countless bears to her to help comfort her during her time of need.

"They just kept bringing them to me," she said. "The first picture they took had hundreds of bears in it.”

Growing up on the land as a child, Naskathey never had the full Christmas experience.

"I never got any gifts for Christmas," she said. "I decided to send them to the children and it just took off. I want to be able to put a smile on somone's face at Christmas."

Communities like Lutsel K'e, Jean Marie River, Wrigley and Gameti have had Naskathy's bears delivered to them just before Christmas over the last eight years.

Naskathey said the most bears she has collected in a single year was around 500.

Last year cancer reared its ugly head once more.

"They removed a tumour from my brain," she said. "Now it wants to slither into my bones."

She wasn't able to send the bears out in time for Christmas.

"I just wasn't able to get it done this year," she said. "Things have been really difficult and the person who was supposed to take them never did."

So last week, Naskathey delivered three boxes and a bag of bears to the pediatrics department at Stanton Hospital. On her way into the hospital she gave one of the bears to a child going home from a doctor's visit.

"I hope the bear will make that child have a better day," she said.

The pediatrics department accepted the bears with open arms and one nurse said it was a nice gesture and the kids who are in the ward will be happy to get one.