An aspiring young artist from Riverview, N.B., is spending hours at her easel to raise money for kids with cancer and to honour the legacy of Becca Schofield.
Nine-year-old Chloe Davis hums a happy tune while she paints, thinking back to a time that wasn’t so joyous.
“When I had cancer, I did not like it and others kids don’t like it because it feels very bad,” she said while sitting in front of her easel.
Chloe spent two and a half exhausting years traveling from New Brunswick to the IWK Health Centre in Halifax to undergo treatments for leukemia, which started at the age of four.
Now that she has now been cancer-free three years, she wants to help other kids facing cancer — one paint stroke at a time. She’s selling her paintings to raise money for several charities that help kids with cancer.
“There are lots of kids who have cancer and they feel like they are lost and they want to get out of the hospital.”
Chloe is also painting in honour of someone she now calls an angel watching over her, Becca Schofield, the Riverview teen whose kindness movement inspired the world — the #BeccaToldMeTo online movement has left a lasting impression on this little girl’s heart.
Chloe says she paints with Becca’s picture pinned to her easel and says it is like Becca is guiding her, “like she is taking care of me while I do this and is showing me the path to nice.”
“She really looked up to Becca as a role model the way most of us still do,” says Elizabeth Davis, Chloe’s mother.
That’s why Davis says that with every painting her daughter sells, she also hands out a card honouring her friend’s powerful kindness legacy.
“She is going to give them one of Becca’s #BeccaToldMeTo cards that has her story, because she also wants to be sure she is spreading kindness.”
WATCH: Becca Schofield passes away after battle with cancer
Chloe’s favorite things to paint are dragonflies and butterflies. She recently did a special butterfly painting in blue in honour of Becca.
“She is an angel. She reminds me of butterflies, so I did it,” she says.
“She has a huge heart and, as a mom, and her father as well, it just makes us really proud,” says Davis, who adds that her daughter now wants to become an artist someday.
With every painting Chloe sells, she’ll continue to wish on butterflies for her greatest hope of all. “It would be amazing if there was no more cancer in the world and they could just spend time with their family.”