Charity activist.
Born at Winnipeg on 26 August 1955 to James Hayes and his wife Florence, one of seven children, she attended Elmwood High School, and, after a stint working for Zellers, joined Air Canada in 1987. Her father was a porter with CP Rail and her mother a part-time cleaner with the Canadian National Railway, both perhaps influencing her interest in travel.
After a transfer to Air Canada’s Vancouver operations in 1991, she found the passion that consumed the rest of her life. Airline volunteers in Toronto had started a charity in 1989 that raised funds to send a planeload of disadvantaged children to Walt Disney World in Florida. The first flight, in 1990, sent 68 children and 32 escorts on a whirlwind one-day trip to Florida. Inspired by the event, she helped establish a Vancouver chapter. In 1993, assisted by a small army of volunteers, she led the first group of 125 BC children—some seriously ill, others with mental or financial challenges—on a trip to Disneyland in California.
From then on, she carried out two jobs: her full-time work for Air Canada guest relations, and her charity work as founding Vancouver President of Dreams Take Flight. The charity grew to eight Canadian cities, as well as Air Canada stations in Los Angeles and Tampa. It offers trips each year to some 1,000 children. For a time, she also served as the charity’s National President.
In 1996, she married Logan Fergusson, who then became involved in helping to organize Dreams Take Flight along with his wife. Diagnosed with brain cancer in 2007, she underwent treatment and recovered enough to receive Air Canada’s Art of Excellence Award, which included a free trip to anywhere in the world. On the trip to Australia with her husband, she took along a purple balloon with a drawn-on face and yarn hair, that had been given her by a little girl named Amber who had been too sick with cancer to experience Dreams Take Flight that year. At key points on the trip she’d inflate the purple ballon, called Leila, and have a picture taken. She then created an album, so that Amber could see Australia through Leila’s eyes, this gesture illustrating her devotion to the cause.
The aggressive cancer returned a few months later, but in October 2008 she was able to make one last trip to Disneyland, confined to a wheelchair, with 125 children, including Amber. Over 16 years with Dreams Take Flight, she helped 2,000 children have their one magical day in Disneyland.
She died at Vancouver, British Columbia on 12 November 2008.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 29 November 2008.
“Lori Christine Ferguson 1955-2008” by Ken McQueen, Maclean’s, 22 December 2008.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 2 December 2024
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