MPP Sylvia Jones in Bolton to help celebrate Miracle Treat Day

Written By JULIA LLOYD

On Thursday August 8 Dairy Queen celebrated Miracle Treat Day across Canada. 

MPP of Dufferin-Caledon Sylvia Jones visited a few local Dairy Queens and helped volunteer at the Bolton location as a way to support the cause.  

“I just think Miracle Treat Day is a wonderful way for the community to give to such an incredible cause,” said Jones. 

In line at Dairy Queen, Bella Spencer and her best friend Avelina Bukumirobic couldn't stop smiling while waiting for their turn to order a Blizzard. 

Avelina was once a patient at SickKids when she was just a little girl. She is a pre-teen now, but was born with a heart defect and spent a lot of her childhood in and out of the hospital. However, from the giant smile on her face you would never have guessed she herself was once a patient at SickKids.  

Avelina is healthy now, but as a reminder of how much SickKids means to her and other children, Avelina and her best friend Bella, visited Bolton's Dairy Queen in-support of Miracle Treat Day. 

“SickKids helped us out a lot. She was lucky enough to have a heart defect that didn't involve surgery, but we appreciate all that SickKids has done for her as well as other kids across the province,” said Avelina's mom, who accompanied the girls on to Dairy Queen. 

One employee, Alana DellaMora, has worked a total of four Miracle Treat Days and said it's her favourite day of the year. DellaMora said she enjoys working Miracle Treat Days because everyone is in a good mood, it supports a great cause and she get's to meet a lot of “neat kids”. 

While volunteering, MPP Sylvia Jones helped put all the names of people who bought a Blizzard in support of SickKids on the wall of the store. She took the time to speak with customers and helped hand out Blizzards. 

“I don't ever touch the Blizzard machine, I am terrified I would break it, or it would go everywhere” laughed Jones. “I don't do Blizzards, I do the delivery of the Blizzards; It's safer.” 

Bolton's Dairy Queen and the Dairy Queen in Orangeville will donate all the money made from the sale of Blizzards on August 8 to SickKids. 

The owners and staff at Bolton Dairy Queen are still in the works of counting all the receipts and putting together the total amount that is to be donated. They hope to have a number for the public shortly. 

If you don't already know, SickKids is a hospital for Sick Children, a health-care community dedicated to improving the health of children across the country.

In their annual report for 2018-2019, SickKids found that 289 is the average number of beds that are occupied daily. At the hospital there are 3,421 Health-care professionals, 1,690 management and support workers and 764 Physicians. 

SickKids provides a lot of opportunities for people to volunteer or get involved. As of March 2019, when the annual report was published, SickKids had a total of 1,507 volunteers and 272 Women's Auxiliary Volunteers, as well, 272 research summer students and 564 research graduate students.