Delbridge family moving to Alberta

It has been a long summer for the Delbridge family of Fort Frances.
Ever since their daughter, Alicia, was stricken with a mysterious, life-threatening heart ailment while visiting family in Alberta back in August, Cory and Christina’s lives have been turned upside down as they watched her struggle for life in the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary.
But now that it seems their feisty one-year-old will win her battle, the chaos in the couple’s continues as Alicia’s doctors insist she remain nearby so they can continue to monitor her progress.
“The specialists told us she has to be near them for an undetermined time,” Cory Delbridge explained Saturday at Canada Safeway here, where he is the assistant manager.
The reason for the doctors’ concern is they have not yet determined the degree of permanent damage young Alicia’s heart may have sustained from her illness.
As well, they still don’t know what caused her medical crisis.
Delbridge said his daughter’s heart function is not yet back to 100 percent—and may never be. That’s why transplant surgery was one of the options being considered, in which case she would have been transferred to Edmonton for the procedure.
That option, Delbridge noted, is on the back burner for now because her heart function continues to improve.
Since the family’s ordeal began back on Aug. 6, they have been in Calgary as Alicia struggled for her life—relying for the most part on the generosity of people back home to help them cope with the costs of living in a strange city with no other source of income.
“We’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the generosity of the people here,” Delbridge remarked, whose wife was a part-time teaching assistant at Fort Frances High School.
Local residents have chipped in about $2,000 since early August—and most of it was done anonymously.
“People would come in and donate $20-$30 and I would ask their names so we could thank them properly, but they refused,” noted Safeway manager Dave McBride.
Now Canada Safeway has stepped up to the plate.
While the Delbridges were out west, McBride was busy trying to find a permanent solution to the situation and it appears he has accomplished just that.
On Sept. 16, Delbridge returned here to run the local store while McBride took some long-overdue vacation. It was then that he was informed Canada Safeway has arranged to transfer him to its store in Calgary, where he will assume the same position he currently holds here (assistant manager).
McBride said such a lateral promotion is almost unheard of, and he was as pleased and surprised as Delbridge when it actually came through.
“These internal transfers are very rare in our company,” McBride stressed, noting Delbridge’s situation was taken up by two company vice-presidents in Chicago before it was approved.
“It couldn’t have been handled better,” McBride added.
The plan calls for Delbridge to remain here until sometime in October and then make the permanent move to Calgary. In the interim, Safeway already is arranging to sell the family’s home here and find another one for them in Calgary.
This, said McBride, is typical of the way the company handles personnel transfers. “They try to make relocation as painless as possible,” he remarked.
Now that the family crisis is nearing an end, Delbridge has had time to reflect on all the events. And he’s decided things could have been much, much worse.
His daughter is in the best possible hands, which would not have been the case had she been stricken somewhere other than Calgary, which has one of the finest children’s hospitals in the world.
“In retrospect, if this was to happen anywhere, it’s a good thing it happened there [in Calgary],” he concluded.
But will he miss the friends and strangers here in Fort Frances who were so instrumental in helping his family cope?
“Oh yeah, big time,” he replied.