Street to be renamed for lung transplant recipient
Double-lung transplant recipient Hélène Campbell will have a city street named after her this month.
Hélène Campbell Road will replace the western extension of Jockvale Road between Cedarview Road and Strandherd Drive, only blocks from the Barrhaven home where she grew up. The renaming of that portion of Jockvale Road was necessitated by the fact that the street now intersects with Strandherd in two places, posing potential confusion for emergency responders.
“It’s really neat,” Campbell says. “It’s a great representation of what can be accomplished when people come together to support something. And the fact that it’s happening in Barrhaven means a lot, because that’s where this story started, and it wouldn’t be known if it weren’t for the community there.”
Campbell, 25, was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2011, and underwent a successful double-lung transplant in April 2012. In the three months before the operation, as she waited in Toronto for donor lungs to become available, she famously encouraged TV host Ellen DeGeneres and singer Justin Bieber to spread the word about organ donation.
Campbell admits, though, that she initially found the street naming honour a bit disconcerting.
“I felt uncomfortable at first, because I’m still alive. I have this idea that people who die get a street.
“But the reason I’m here today is because of a collection of people, so I don’t feel they’re naming this street just for me, but also for the donor who passed away and what that person has done. They wouldn’t have named this street for me if I’d had a transplant and didn’t make it, or died before they found a suitable donor.”
She jokes that she might talk to the developer about getting a house on her street. “Now THAT would be cool!”
Since receiving her new lungs, Campbell has been active in numerous causes and charities, including the United Way and Girl Guides. She also works with such organizations as the Canadian National Transplant Research Program and Réseau des services de santé en français de l’Est de l’Ontario — the latter helps ensure that francophone patients have access to health care in French. She annually sponsors the Lung Run, while she and her mother, Manon, are in the process of fundraising for a home in Toronto where adults in need of organ transplants can live while awaiting operations.
Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder says the decision to honour Campbell was an easy one.
“In addition to being a lovely woman, Hélène Campbell certainly raised the bar on organ donation through her own illness, and I don’t think there’s a person who didn’t see her as a champion, somebody who in the face of such a personal threat rose and tried to make a difference — hopefully for herself but if it came to it, she knew that she would have made a difference for others, and she did.
“She is so innocent in her passion,” adds Harder, “and just a special human being.
“I’d been thinking for a number of years now about what would be a fitting tribute to Hélène. Something that would matter and that people would remember.”
A commemoration ceremony, attended by Campbell, Harder, Mayor Jim Watson and MPP Lisa MacLeod, will take place at Strandherd Drive and Hélène Campbell Road at 2:30 p.m. on May 20, to which attendees are asked to bring “comfortable dancing shoes.”
I felt uncomfortable at first, because I’m still alive. I have this idea that people who die get a street.