Kendrick

A baby Inuit boy from Nunavut is at home enjoying a bright future with his family after a frightening battle with pneumonia that nearly took his life, thanks to expert care at Manitoba’s only children’s hospital.

HSC Children’s Hospital serves not just kids from our province, but Northwestern Ontario and Nunavut too, and Kendrick’s family is deeply grateful the hospital was there when they needed it most.

“Kendrick is a very strong, miracle baby,” says Kendrick’s mom Mina.

In late December of 2025, when he was ten months old, Kendrick came down with pneumonia. The family lives in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut on the Belcher Islands of southeastern Hudson Bay. The community is far from emergency medical care, and when Kendrick got sick, a blizzard had been hammering the area for almost a week.

Parents, Mina and Mike, worried about Kendrick’s breathing and took him through the snow to the local health centre, where they first treated him with an oxygen mask. Kendrick’s condition continued to get worse, and the health care team surgically placed a breathing tube in his throat and used a resuscitator bag squeezed by hand to continue airflow.

It took two days for the weather to clear enough for a medical plane to fly in and take the family first to Churchill, Manitoba and then to HSC Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg.

Kendrick hadn’t been getting enough oxygen to his brain and was facing severe complications including brain damage.

“During our stay in Children’s Hospital I cried many times saying I don’t want my baby to be sick,” says Mina. “I just stopped overthinking and started praying instead.” 

On January 25, 2026, Kendrick’s grandparents flew to Winnipeg believing he was about to take his last breath, as his breathing tube was scheduled to come out. But Kendrick surprised everyone, when he continued to inhale and exhale after the tube was removed.

“Children’s hospital staff supported us very well,” says Mina. “They respected us. They took great care of Kendrick and us parents and his grandparents too.”

Kendrick celebrated his first birthday in hospital in February of 2026. Then, after lots of physical therapy and healing, Kendrick flew home to Sanikiluaq, Nunavut at the end of March 2026.

When Kendrick first returned to his community, he didn’t want to crawl or make sounds and just wanted to be held by his family. Now, he’s thriving and learning to walk and talk.

He needs special glasses to see because of the brain damage he experienced and will require further support from experts as he grows, but Kendrick’s family is grateful to have him at home, and excited to watch him play and enjoy time with his loved ones.