Russell LeBlanc Memorial Music Scholarship

Hello, my name is Sandra. I am the second daughter of Russell and Donna LeBlanc. On February 26, 2022, Russell lost his long battle with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), a blood cancer. On Feb 15, 2022, Russell decided that he was done with blood transfusions which were keeping him alive and made the courageous decision to permit his body to die. That week between his last blood transfusion and his death was one of reflection and spending time with family. We talked a lot about what was important to him: his family and his music.

Russell was a talented musician and spent many years playing the saxophone (tenor mostly but baritone and alto as well), piano, flute, and clarinet. He was also a talented writer of music with his arrangments played by bands such as the Right Stuff, Vintage and more recently The Carl Getto jazz group.

One of Russell's last wishes was for his song, "God Bless Children" to be used for something good: he imagined a children's choir singing his song and for the proceeds of it to be used for music scholarships. We are still working out how we could produce such a demonstration of Dad's talent, but we wanted to get started on his scholarship.

We are asking for donations so we can provide a local Cape Breton high school band student a scholarship to study music at university.