CORRECTION: After contacting the contractor, Global News has confirmed with Julie Monette that the contractor did indeed install $10,000 worth of flooring and $8,000 worth of roofing panels.
The contractor did not in any way “make off” with the $18,000, though the parties are now locked in a legal dispute with respect to the work.
Global News regrets and apologizes for the error.
SAINTE-JUSTINE-DE-NEWTON – Welcome to Sainte-Justine-de-Newton, a small town with a Christmas miracle in the making.
Mathieu Chouinard lives there and has one simple wish for Christmas.
“He wants a Christmas tree,” said his teary-eyed mother, Julie Monette.
But his story is not that simple.
Mathieu and his family live in a home next door to his, for now.
Until he was five, he loved spending time with his sister and enjoyed riding his bike.
Mathieu is now eight-years-old and he has traded that bike for a different set of wheels.
He is confined to a wheelchair due to a rare debilitating, deadly disease.
For Monette, every day is an uphill battle.
“He’s not talking any more, not walking any more. It’s going to go down until the end,” said Monette.
“I have to take Mathieu up the stairs every night in my arms and he is 50 pounds.”
This is why Mathieu needs an adapted home.
A year ago, the community rallied and raised enough money to help change Mathieu’s home to his needs.
“The people in the village here did a spaghetti supper the first time,” said Monette.
“It was last April and we raised $16,000.”
She managed to raised more money with another party at their home.
A Good Samaritan came forward and offered to build Mathieu’s new, adapted room, but things took a bad turn.
“The first person who told us she was going to help us just let us down after about two months,” explained Monette.
“She left with $18,000 of the $22,000 that we raised.”
That left Mathieu’s home incomplete.
So now, Mathieu’s Christmas tree, standing at the entrance of their home, is still waiting to be decorated.
“That’s the new bathroom… Now we’re just waiting for the kitchen,” said Monette, as she showed Global News around.
Their “new” home has everything Mathieu needs and the family can’t wait to move in.
They hope they can do so, just in time for Christmas.
“This is Mathieu’s bedroom and that’s a donation,” said Monette, pointing at a giant print of a waterfall surrounded by lush greenery.
It’s a print inspired by special times the mother and son had together.
They ventured out to see a waterfall, and Monette wrapped her son around her back with a blanket so she could carry the boy.
“When I went down and it was there, and Mathieu was there. It’s like I was trying,” she said.
“Before it’s too late. Probably he’s not going be a teenager ever.”
But it’s not too late for Christmas and she’s hoping the community can come together once again and help them raise the money they still need to do the last repairs.
The family has set up a blog through which people can donate.
“It will be amazing. It will be my gift,” she said.
They’ve set up the donation page in the hopes that perhaps, on Christmas Eve, they will gather round their tree waiting for Santa to come down their chimney.