Friends and neighbours of a New Brunswick family forced to move to Ontario while waiting for a transplant operation are rallying to save their home.
Gloria Lambert has cystic fibrosis. She is currently in Toronto waiting for a double-lung transplant and could be there for several more months.
Her family is by her side, but the cost of keeping two homes – an apartment in the Toronto area and a bungalow in Rowley, a rural area outside Saint John – is proving too much for the family.
As a result, Lambert’s home in Rowley is facing foreclosure later this month.
Next-door neighbour Valerie Shaw says the Lamberts were the first to offer assistance when her husband fell ill.
“They were more worried about my husband being sick than herself,” says Shaw.
“She offered to be his first responder and she was on oxygen and had a hard time getting around herself, but she said ‘I’ll get there, or I’ll get somebody to get there.’”
The Saint John Mill Rats basketball team was among the first to help the Lamberts.
Mill Rats Foundation member Bev Szemerda and family friend Mary Hanson are organizing a fundraiser, set to take place Dec. 12 at UNBSJ.
“In order to save her house, we’re going to have to sell these tickets quick,” says Szemerda. “We need to sell 300 tickets in one week…we’ll do it.”
“When somebody’s going through something like this, I just don’t know how you can turn your back on them and not want to help,” says Hanson.
Friends hope the home can be saved for the Lamberts when they return from their temporary stay in Toronto.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Mike Cameron
