BONNYVILLE – Hayleigh Humphreys said the hardest part for her after her adopted sister Emma Humphreys was diagnosed with cancer was watching her lose her battle to the disease.
“She’d go from being this happy, fun-loving kid to just not being able to walk or talk or anything,” Hayleigh recalled. “It was really heartbreaking for me as her sister because there were a lot of things that I had wanted to do when she wasn’t sick and just knowing that there’s a lot of people that felt the same way about that is kind of heartbreaking.”
Princess Emma lost her battle with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas (DIPG), which is a disease that causes tumours to form at the base of the brain, on Oct. 20, 2020, 876 days after she was diagnosed. She became known to the Bonnyville-area as a warrior princess who never let her illness stop her from enjoying her life.
“Emma was the perfect combination of sweet and sassy, where she would share with you, ask you to play with her, and she would help out where she could. But, if you made her mad, or if she didn’t think something was right, you knew it, because she had the utmost sass when she wanted to,” Hayleigh laughed.
Cathie Humphreys, Emma and Hayleigh’s mom, announced earlier this year the family would be organizing the World's Longest Softball Tournament for the Love of Emma Initiative. The plan was for the game to run non-stop for 120 hours.
The event was going to raise funds for the Bonnyville Health Foundation, Kids with Cancer Society, and the pediatric assist team at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.
In order to help her mom with the costs of putting on a tournament of this size, Hayleigh announced the creation of her online store, Over the Rainbow. The shop features a clothing line and items that are softball and Emma-related.
The store sells t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, lanyards and masks, among other items, all featuring a silhouette image of Emma and her sister.
Unfortunately, Humphreys made the difficult decision not to go ahead with the tournament this year due to COVID-19 restrictions and the unknowns surrounding the protocols that would be in place this summer.
Hayleigh said the event will likely go ahead once it’s safe to do so.
“I know that our family has always been into softball, and it’s a good way to spread awareness, get people together, and have fun with it. My mom loves organizing things that get people together to talk about and raise awareness for things that she believes in, and she’s especially passionate about DIPG.”
Hayleigh decided to keep her store open after receiving positive feedback, but instead of the proceeds going to the tournament, she will be making donations to the Kids with Cancer Society.
“I figured people would be interested in helping a larger organization that can do a little bit more than we can locally,” she noted, adding she wanted to make sure families going through what hers did had just as much support as they received.
She continued, “I just feel like some families don’t have the community that we do here in Bonnyville, Cold Lake, and the Lakeland. Sometimes they do need help from those organizations, and I would like to help out as many families as I can in those communities.”
Princess Emma became known across the region for her fundraising efforts after her diagnosis. She was part of a toy drive for the Stollery Children's Hospital, volunteered with Kids with Cancer Society, and she even ran her own lemonade stand.
Toonies for Two Years was one of Emma’s last fundraisers, where she and her friends collected toonies in butterfly nets and donated the proceeds to the local hospital. She did it on a milestone celebration two years after her diagnosis, which isn’t an event a lot of children with DIPG reach.
Hayleigh wants to keep Emma’s legacy alive by helping as many people as she can. It’s a lesson Cathie tried to instill in all of her children and something Hayleigh intends to carry on.
“I don’t think I’d ever try to organize something or try to fundraise as much as I have for anything without Emma,” she said.
