Champion for Charity Alex Kinsella thanks McMaster Children’s Hospital for helping oldest daughter survive and thrive
By Jeff Hicks
KITCHENER —
Writing is boxing with a knockout combination of words.
Boxing is writing with a fistful of real-world wallop.
“Every punch someone throws is telling a story or part of a story,” said writer and marketer Alex Kinsella, one of Mandy Bujold’s 20 Champions for Charity who will step into the ring for the first time in The Brawl at Tapestry Hall on April 12th.
“Especially when we’re in the ring on Fight Night, this is reading that story as it happens.”
A sold-out evening of rights and writes. Turns of wrists and turns of phrases in every bout.
All to benefit McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation.
You need more motivation to help the Champs add to the $228,644 fundraising total and reach the $250,000 goal? You need to experience a “mic-drop moment”, when the microphone hits the floor with a definitive thud.
That’s what Irish-born Kinsella, who grew up in the Florida sunshine of West Palm Beach, is always on the lookout for. His profile subjects speak. The writer from the land of The Quiet Man listens for a mic-drop moment to hang the story on.
“They say one line and that is the end of the article,” Kinsella said. “That’s what I want to leave the reader with. That is the call-to-action, the spiritual moment, the subject has. This is what I need to see change in the world. This is what inspires me.”
Kinsella and wife Laurie, a number-crunching, volleyball-spiking accountant, deliver their inspiring, mic-drop moment from their lives about 14 years ago.
Their first daughter Maeve, a day and a half old, was in distress.
They had yet to discover she had been born with an undetected congenital heart defect. Maeve’s two main arteries were reversed. The condition was severe and rare.
Confused and concerned, they staggered back to their corner at Grand River Hospital.
“We didn’t know what the heck was happening,” Kinsella recalled.
“We were new parents. We had no idea.”
A triage team of nurses from McMaster Children’s Hospital arrived and took charge. The ensuing ambulance ride to Hamilton was a harrowing and hurried taxi of fear and uncertainty.
The anxiety came to an abrupt end.
Maeve was stabilized with surgery at McMaster after the condition was identified.
She had open-heart surgery at Sick Kids in Toronto and follow-ups at McMaster.
Monthly check-ups became quarterly. She hasn’t had to go back since the pandemic.
And now we come to your McMaster mic-drop moment. Try to stay on your feet.
“Without the team at McMaster, she wouldn’t be here today,” Kinsella said of his oldest of three daughters. “They were here and took control, identified the condition and made the call.”
Maeve is 14 now. She just finished 4th in wrestling at the Waterloo County championships, in her first year as a Kitchener Collegiate grappler. She plays Waterloo County rugby too.
This is why Kinsella, now 20 years in Waterloo Region after following a tech job north, trains like he never has before.
This is not a stein-filled stint with Fighting Pints beer-league softball team — with an old-tymey John L. Sullivan boxer on the team t-shirt — he once bench-warmed and ran out grounders for.
This is real boxing. He experienced it in 2019 when Laurie’s good friend Lara was a champion for charity. He and Laurie were ringside that night.
Now, he’s in the ring writing his story with every plot-driving flurry of fisticuffs.
A jab for Eileen, 9 his youngest kung fu and aikido enthusiast daughter.
Another jab for Ria, 11, who recently became smitten with the same Degrassi High Canadian TV show Kinsella fell in love with growing up.
An inspired right for Maeve, a visual artist with an eye for animation.
“When we’re training, I always think of the organization we’re raising money for. My family knows the impact of it,” said Kinsella, who began training in January.
“It’s a lot of motivation to get up and give everything I’ve got.”
The microphone, like a fallen fighter, just hit the canvas.
To Support Alex and make a donation to McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation – Click HERE
