Remembering MaCali: Children's clinic to benefit orphans

Heartbreak and heartfelt connections lead to special memorial for young girl from Yarmouth

Nearly 13,000 kilometres from Yarmouth, N.S., babies and children are being cared for in a new medical clinic in Thailand.

It doesn’t matter if their conditions are contagious. They are held. Touched. Loved.

It doesn’t matter if they were abandoned. Here no one is ever rejected or made to feel that way.

The clinic – which, pardon the cliché, truly is a dream come true – is part of Nikki’s Place Agape Home, an orphanage in Thailand. Many children are (or are at risk of becoming) HIV positive. Many have lost parents to AIDS. If the children weren’t here, there would be no other option for their care.

On the wall of the new clinic a plaque will soon be mounted identifying its name.

This is the MaCali Cormier Children’s Clinic.

MaCali is a little girl from Yarmouth who lit up hearts during her lifetime, and broke hearts when she died as a result of a terrible tragedy during Yarmouth’s holiday parade of lights in November 2018. The four-year-old slipped underneath a float as it made its way along the parade route.

The community, numb from its shock and sadness, quickly offered love and support to MaCali’s family and friends, to the first responders and to others – many families – who had witnessed the terrible incident during what was supposed to be a fun, festive, family event.

THE REACH OF HEARTBREAK

In another province Greg Roberts, whose hometown is Triton, Newfoundland and Labrador, heard the news of MaCali’s death. As a parent of two daughters, it touched him deeply. He later discovered he had a connection to the little girl. MaCali’s grandfather, Rollie Hannem of Yarmouth, had been Roberts’ teacher when Hannem lived and taught in Newfoundland.

He was also a guidance counsellor.

“I had Mr. H. in school from, I believe, Grade 9-11. The school was RW Parsons Collegiate. He was a special teacher and one of the first who I remember talking to us almost like adults and not just kids,” Roberts says. “He had a lot of patience and to this day I remember many of the conversations in class and out and around. He was a special teacher to me and many others.”

A few years ago when Hannem was visiting Newfoundland, he tracked Roberts down for a visit.