From grief to purpose: Coquitlam mother runs to honour son lost to brain cancer

The run began as a walk to the cemetery.

In the months after losing her nine-year-old son Owen to brain cancer, Coquitlam’s Denise Leung found herself making the same journey every day – leaving her home near Como Lake and heading toward Robinson Memorial Park, where Owen was laid to rest.

“At first, I would walk there every day,” Leung said. “Then I kind of thought, you know, if I can walk this, why don’t I try jogging this?”

The 46-year-old Leung never considered herself athletic. Running five kilometres once seemed unimaginable.

Now, she’s training for her second RBC Race for the Kids, leading Team Happybara – named after Owen’s favourite animal, the capybara – carrying forward the memory of the boy she describes as “the colour of our lives.”

“Owen was such a lovable, sweet boy. He had such a soft heart,” Leung said. “He was proud, brave, and resilient. He was just the light of our family.”

For more than four years, Owen battled medulloblastoma, a rare and aggressive brain cancer diagnosed shortly after his fifth birthday.

The first signs were headaches.

Owen had always been healthy, and Leung said the diagnosis shattered ordinary life.

“You never think it will happen to your family. It was a complete shock,” she said.“It blows up your expectations of what life is going to be like.”

Over the next four years, Owen underwent three brain surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and countless hospital visits. There were periods of hope, stretches where treatment seemed to work, followed by devastating relapses.

For two years, the family pursued treatment with the goal of a cure. Eventually, doctors told them that standard therapies had failed.

But they kept searching anyway, eventually travelling across the country to Toronto for a clinical trial.

“Our doctors were always looking for something,” Leung said. “We enrolled him in studies where they sequenced his tumour to see if there was something else we could do. We never gave up.”

Through it all, Leung says the care team at BC Children’s Hospital became an extension of their family, finding help from nearly every department: oncology, neurosurgery, imaging, endocrinology, audiology (he lost some hearing from treatments), occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dietitians.

“They were the people I leaned on, they kept me up through all of this,” she said. “I never ever had trouble getting him to go to the hospital. It was hard what he went through, but the team there, everybody there, they’re just such special people.

“I cannot think of one negative interaction. Everybody cared so much for us.”

Despite years spent in treatment rooms and hospital hallways, Owen remained remarkably resilient. Just two weeks after his second brain surgery, he earned his yellow belt in taekwondo.

Leung says she often found strength by watching how her son handled hardship.

“I saw how cooperative he was, how resilient he was,” she said. “It gave me strength.”

Owen died in January 2025 at nine and a half years old.

After years spent managing appointments, treatment protocols and caregiving responsibilities, Leung said the sudden quiet left her “lost in purpose.”

Running gave her structure.

A few months after Owen’s death, she signed up for RBC Race for the Kids alongside family members.

“I couldn’t just stop being a mom to him,” she said. “I couldn’t stop caring for him.”

Training gave her something to work toward. Fundraising gave others a way to help.

“There were so many people who were sad that we lost Owen and wanted to do something,” she said. “People would say, ‘Tell me if you need anything,’ but I didn’t need anything. I just wanted Owen.”

The race became a tangible goal.

“It gave me purpose,” she said. “It gave me something to look forward to every day.”

This Sunday, Team Happybara will once again join thousands of runners, walkers and rollers participating in the annual event supporting BC Children’s Hospital.

Leung said she hopes the money raised can help support research and expand treatment options for children facing illnesses like Owen’s – particularly so families won’t have to leave the province to access specialized care.

For her, every kilometre remains deeply personal.

Every day, as she passes through her neighbourhood, she sees places imbued with the memory of her son.

“I run through all the memories we had, and I run through all the places that we’ve spent together, like Blue Mountain Park and the lake by his school, up and down the alleyways, and where he learned to ride his bike,” Leung said. “It was his home, and I’m sort of honouring all these places.”

Honouring Owen’s memory is now driving her forward.

“Owen lived nine years, and he was sick for four of those,” she said. “I just don’t want it all to be in vain. He still mattered, and I want him to be remembered.”

Leung pauses when asked what Owen might think about seeing his mother become a runner.

“I think he would be proud,” she said. “I think he would have gotten a kick out of me running when I wasn’t very active before.”

BC Children’s Hospital RBC Race for the Kids takes place Sunday, June 7.