In the days before he died, nine-year-old René Soto-Taylor got to do the things he enjoyed most in life.
The Grade 3 Oaklands Elementary student, who spent more than half of his life battling neuroblastoma, had friends over so they could play video games and build Lego structures. In the evenings, he’d cuddle up with his parents, Julia Taylor and Luis Soto, as they read to him.
He visited Camp Goodtimes, a camp in Maple Ridge for children with cancer, where he rode in the canoe and made a friendship bracelet. He gave that bracelet to his best friend Rowan, who came to have dinner and play Clue at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in Vancouver.
The family returned to their Victoria home and it was there that René died in the arms of his parents on July 21.
“I was so impressed, Luis and I were both absolutely amazed at how well he handled it,” Taylor said. “He focused on trying to have fun, he focused on loving and enjoying his family. Something that gave Luis and I some comfort is that he was himself, all the way to the end.”
Taylor said it was René’s contagious energy and ever-present smile that allowed him to connect with so many people, from the nurses and doctors at B.C. Children’s Hospital and Victoria General Hospital to the Tour de Rock riders, who met him when he was a junior rider, to the organizers of the Team for Hope, a non-profit that raises money for neuroblastoma research.
Hundreds of people are expected to remember René at a memorial Sunday at 1 p.m. in the gymnasium at Oaklands Elementary School on Belmont Avenue.
René received a diagnosis of neuroblastoma, a type of childhood cancer, in March 2010, a month after his fourth birthday.
Sandy Crisp, a long-time teacher at the school, knew the smiling little boy in his kindergarten class had a punishing disease, but René would rarely show it.
“René was amazing. He would never ever look like he was sick, never acted like he was sick,” Crisp said. “He was one of those kids who would just light up a room. You always knew he was there.”
Crisp remembers the time René had just returned to school after a bout of chemotherapy. He had lost his hair, so he went to the front of the class and asked his classmates if they wouldn’t mind if he broke the no-hats-in-class rule, just for a few days. His classmates were happy to oblige.
Last September, when René started Grade 3, he was quick to help a kindergarten student with kidney cancer who was nervous to ride in the Cops for Cancer Tour de Rock convoy as it rolled into Oaklands School. Having been a junior rider before, “René, in his usual way, said, ‘Come with me, I’ll help you,’ ” Crisp remembers.
Taylor said she and her husband are grateful for all the fundraisers organized by staff and students at Oaklands Elementary, which helped them financially when both parents had to take time off work to care for René.
“We couldn’t have done it without them or any of the other people who have helped us over the last five years,” Taylor said.
In his five-year battle with cancer, René went through chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, stem-cell transplants and antibody treatments. He was twice declared in remission and twice relapsed.
Lisa Hopkins, founder of Team for Hope and whose son Jordan survived stage 4 neuroblastoma, met René and his parents in 2012. The Team for Hope organizes the Touch A Truck fundraiser, which brings in police vehicles, helicopters, excavators and other cool machinery for children to sit in — paradise for a kid like René.
Hopkins also helped arrange a private fire truck tour of the Sidney Fire Department and a tour of the observatory at the Centre of the Universe in Saanich.
“He was quite a ball of energy,” Hopkins said.
“That was his way of approaching everything he did. He wanted to explore, he wanted to have hands on, he wanted to just be in the moment.”
René never seemed to tire of the fundraisers for various cancer-related causes he was part of, because, as both his mother and his teacher said, he seemed to have an understanding well beyond his years that any money for research could help other kids, even if it couldn’t help him.
Every year about 70 children in Canada are diagnosed with neuroblastoma. If their cancer has metastasized, their odds of survival are less than 40 per cent, and if they relapse, there is almost no chance of survival.
Because René met so many kids with cancer at B.C. Children’s Hospital and Camp Goodtimes, he would tell his parents he had friends in heaven, Taylor said.
“He always gave to others, and I don’t mean materially but emotionally and spiritually,” Crisp said. “I think René taught us all that you can deal with whatever comes up in your life and you make the best of what you have. In his nine years, he lived a really full life.”
René’s family asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Ronald McDonald House, Jeneece Place or the Team for Hope. For more information, go to renesrainbows.com.
