Welcome

“Nature is Healing.”
“Nature is the best medicine.”
Nicolas Vomvas, Umiujaq Expedition 1998

From the beginning

Since 1996, the On the Tip of the Toes Foundation has been organising therapeutic adventure expeditions for teenagers living with cancer. Much more than outdoors activities, these trips offer a chance to spend time with other teenagers who share the same reality, who can understand without needing explanations. They also represent an opportunity to make friends by meeting challenges together, as young people often dream of doing at that stage of life. Through these challenges and by overcoming their limits, we hope to see them rebuild their self-confidence, and their hope for the future.

Our organisation was born out of a desire to make nature accessible to teenagers living with cancer, to allow them to discover that they can experience exceptional adventures and accomplish great things. By participating in these uncommon expeditions, within the limits of their strength, they discover new horizons, other cultures, and reinforce their confidence in life and in themselves; they come to understand that they can be stronger than the disease no matter what challenges it imposes upon them.

Since the beginning, the Foundation organised expeditions to such magical locations as:

• Ellesmere Island National Park, Nunavut, 700 kilometres from the North Pole.
• Gwaii Haanas National Park, British Columbia.
• Monts Valins in the Saguenay region, Anticosti Island, James Bay and Hudson Bay, all in Quebec.
• Albany river, Ontario.
• Yukon Quest trail, Yukon

Depending on the type of expedition, the youth discover nature through hiking, sea kayaking, dog-sledding, snowshoeing, canoeing and snowmobile. They are supervised by a team of experienced guides and a specialised medical team.