NEW WATERFORD, N.S. -- A Cape Breton senior isn’t letting a bad fall stop him from baking cookies in memory of his late wife, while also fighting the disease that took her.
Carl MacLeod has been selling baked goods to raise funds for multiple sclerosis for 26 years. He started the tradition in the early 90s, after his wife was diagnosed with the disease.
In the early years, Shirley would help him bake cookies, cakes, truffles and fudge, as much as her declining health would allow.
“Sometimes I would dream at night that she walked again, and I wouldn’t really want to wake up,” recalls MacLeod, who lives in New Waterford, N.S.
Shirley battled multiple sclerosis for years, before passing away in 2013.
“She was my inspiration. After she passed away I lost my inspiration,” he says. “But I still had my determination.”
MacLeod continued the tradition, but he says carrying on without his wife has been tough.
“It’s not the same without her to listen to my stories or anything else,” he says
This is MacLeod’s 26th year selling his baked goods, and he admits it may be his last.
Now 83, MacLeod took a bad fall in the summer, and now has trouble getting around, let alone going door-to-door with his treats.
“This year is a really tough year because I fractured my femur in June and I’m still using a walker,” he says. “This year might be my last. I am just about 84. Heaven knows what’s going to happen to me in the next year.”
If this is his last year, MacLeod is hoping to make it count.
“I would like to be able to go out with a bang, sell everything I take in.”
Whether or not he lives to see it, he hopes MS will, one day, be defeated.
“Someday didn’t come yet, but someday it will,” he says.
Meanwhile, he knows Shirley will be with him when he makes his rounds this year, one way or another.
“Every single day that I do it, I’m thinking about her.”
