InFocus Magazine

People say adversity can either knock you down or make you stronger.  In local photographer Karen McKinnon’s case, it inspired her.  Two years after her stepdaughter Maggie Johnson, then four, was diagnosed with leukemia, McKinnon founded A Fighting Spirit, a non-profit initiative that offers free professional photographic sessions to families with critically ill children.

McKinnon, who parents five children as well as running her own business, McKinnon Photography, doesn’t downplay the immense practical and emotional burdens she and her family have faced, but she’s got plenty to say about the gifts that accompany the challenges.

Dealing with illness as a family, she says, makes you grateful for every day you have together, grateful for all the help and support that keep on coming, grateful for the strength and resiliency of the human spirit—and out of that gratitude comes a natural desire to give back.

None of this, however, cancels out the difficulties.  “It’s impossible to imagine just how complicated life gets with a critically ill child.  Never mind the emotional stuff—the logistical stuff is overwhelming!  There are huge financial stresses.  You have so much you have to learn—about your child’s illness; about how to get the forms [for discounted travel] for BC Ferries; about making the appointments; about the health considerations the rest of the family now has to have; about how to work with the school system in a different way.  Meanwhile, one parent is probably busy applying for EI because they had to leave their job in order to be a caregiver.

“But what stood out for our family during this time is the support we received.  We were going to have to spend a lot of time in Vancouver for treatment—and we were handed the keys to an apartment there by YANA [You Are Not Alone, a Comox Valley organization that provides housing in Vancouver for the families of children needing medical treatment].

“I was so touched by being helped by YANA.  I was touched by the kids in the school who picked strawberries and brought them to our door.  I was touched by my clients who brought us food baskets.  And this wasn’t just impacting Maggie, but also her siblings.  They were overwhelmed by the kindness they were shown.  They asked us, ‘Why are people being so nice to us?’  One of the strongest things they are taking away from the experience of their sister having leukemia is the knowledge that people are good.

“So it was natural for me to think, what can we do to contribute to others?”

Maggie had been sick for about a year when McKinnon began to form the idea that blossomed into A Fighting Spirit.  McKinnon had, quite naturally, been photographing Maggie’s journey the whole time (she says photography is her passion, not just her business), and had made a slide show, set to music, using some of these images.

“I was blown away by how meaningful it was to have these images,” McKinnon says.  “What we’ve gone through has changed our family.  Looking at those photographs helped us all digest our experience.  When we look at them, we feel our strength—wow, we did that!  Maggie is so beautiful in all of them, no matter what treatment she is going through.

“And for Maggie, the photographs are something that she can look back on and share with her friends or her own children.”

Inspired by the power of photography, McKinnon began volunteering her photographic services to YANA.  She created a series of portraits of the children helped by YANA’s services, which the organization used to publicize its work.  “A lot of people have heard of YANA, but this helped to put a face on it.  People could see the pictures and say, ‘Oh I know that kid,’” says McKinnon.

Her experience with YANA only strengthened McKinnon’s desire to continue contributing through photography.  “I was really impacted by the kids I photographed, who had survived so many things adults haven’t had to face.”