A young Paris resident raised over $7,300 for aHUS Canada on Saturday, June 21, 2025.
Seven-year-old Ava Mayhew spent around four hours outside of Sobeys Paris selling countless cups of lemonade.
Mayhew and her family said they were running the lemonade stand to raise money and awareness for atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS). A rare form of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA), aHUS affects the small blood vessels and causes damage to various organs, particularly the kidneys.
“I’m doing a lemonade stand for TMA, it’s a rare disease,” said Mayhew. “We’ve got lemonade, lots of cookies, cake pops, doughnuts, and we have little bracelets, keychains and rings!”
When asked why it was important to her to raise the funds, the youngster replied “…My mom had the blood disease and she passed away.”
Ava’s mother, Amy van Konynenburg, was first diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, just a couple weeks after moving from Hamilton to Paris. After eventually undergoing a double mastectomy, she was officially declared cancer-free.
Although things were starting to look up, the mother and her family received difficult news just four months later in August of 2024.
“She had some symptoms, so she had gone in for some bloodwork and had to go back to the hospital, and that’s when they diagnosed her with leukemia,” recalled Gerry van Konynenburg, Amy’s father.
“She stayed at Juravinski Hospital for 60 days or so, but she was so sick; anything she could catch, she did,” added Amy’s mother, Kathy. “They eventually let her out and she was actually cancer free at Christmas, but they knew she was going to get leukemia again and so they offered her a stem cell transplant in January. …It ended up working and two days later they gave her a date to come home, but four days later we found out she had developed TMA.”
Gerry said that Amy later passed away on Tuesday, April 1, after the aHUS later led to her kidneys shutting down and causing a stroke.
Despite the heavy loss of losing her mother, Mayhew remains a beacon of light to her family. Having wanted to have a lemonade stand for several years now, the youngster asked her grandparents if they could put one on in honour of her mother.
She and her grandmother eventually pitched the idea to Jackee Mills, franchisee of Sobeys Paris.
“Kathy shops in my store and, being in a smaller community, you sort of see the same faces and you start talking and so she had told me about Amy not being well,” said Mills. “When she came in for her weekly shop, we would always chat and when she started bringing Ava along, we eventually became little buddies and so when she asked if they could set up a lemonade stand, it was just a no brainer for me.”
Eventually, other neighbours and family friends, as well as local businesses, all began pitching in to help as well; La Trenza Tacos, Tim Hortons, Domino’s and I AM Demolition, all had a hand in getting the event off the ground.
“The community is just amazing,” said an emotional Kathy. “It’s just been really wonderful to see everyone come out and support this.”
Not only did friends, family and strangers stop by or donate online in a big way, but Kathy later informed the Brant Beacon that Amy’s coworkers from Goeasy pooled together $1,300 for the cause, and that they also received another kind donation from two local girls.
“Two young girls just came by, they had a lemonade stand and they raised $35, and they brought their $35 and put it in our donation jar,” she said “It was just really, really amazing… it brought me to tears.”
In between greeting familiar faces, serving cups of lemonade, and handing out hugs, Mayhew said that seeing everyone stop by, “makes me feel a lot.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
