Bertrand during the March 2007Yukon expedition

If you’ve been with Tip of Toes on an expedition, you surely know Bertrand Dupuis. He has participated in 13 of our last 17 expeditions, which makes him one of our most travelled companions. No wonder he talks about the Foundation like a family affair.

From the early beginnings of On the Tip of Toes 11 years ago, Bertrand got involved. “Our work is to bring kids back to their lives outside the hospital” says the child-life specialist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. And the Foundation does just that, except it brings the cancer patients even further.

Last week, I caught up with Bertrand at the hospital. In fact, I got lost looking for him. But at the Montreal Children’s, one only needs to ask for Bertrand to find him. He’s been around since 1980, that’s why pretty much everybody knows the soft spoken man.

He and his 14 women colleagues are in turn familiar with pretty much all the hospitalized kids. Their don’t have office jobs, they work on the floors, where I follow Bertrand. We meet young patients and their anxious parents. So, what’s good about this job? I ask him: “The contact with kids and their parents.” And the hardest? “The loss of a patient. Death is the most difficult.”

That’s what happened with Marie-Hélène Côté, an oncology patient he met in 1999. A year later they would go on an expedition together. Her passing away is difficult for Bertrand, but he reassures me, saying that “the trips with On the Tip of the Toes hold me together.”

What about this year’s Shave-O-Thon dedicated to Marie-Hélène? “I haven’t come full circle with my grieving. Maybe there’s something to repair. But I will honour the affection I have for her and her family in participating in the Shave-O-Thon.”

He’s been too busy lately to raise his own funds. So here’s his online donation form, if you care to give him a hand.