By Annie Pettit
Imagine your own sweet child, your kid brother or sister, niece or nephew, in hospital and attached to a multitude of beeping machines. Cancer and other life-threatening illness don’t care how tiny or how innocent a child is. Illnesses strike hard, fast, and relentlessly.
But that doesn’t deter employees at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital. Their newest series of ads is gut-wrenching, heart-warming, and breath-taking all at once. The ads exude power, strength, and defiance. The ads laugh in the face of illness, attack like a no-holds barred MMA fighter, and refuse to accept injustice thrust upon children. We love these ads.
Why? Because the stories they tell are about real kids struggling with real illnesses. Our guts ache as we empathize with the pain their families are going through. Canadians may be known for being peacekeepers around the world but we are also fighters. And these ads speak to the fighter inside every Canadian, the caring person who fights to help other people.
If you have a Twitter account, you can read exactly what people around the world have said in English, Spanish, Dutch, Croatian and so many more languages about the ads. Words like “#chills,” “packs a mighty punch,” and “greatest ad I’ve ever seen” proliferate. If any ad can convince people to donate towards a worthy cause, this is the ad.
Thank you, Sick Kids, for continuing to fight a great fight.