This article was originally published in the April 2025 edition of Héma-Québec’s Magazine. All issues of the Magazine are available here.

Sylvain, stem cell recipient

Not all heroes wear capes... but some wear helmets

Ex-firefighter Sylvain Côté was facing down his second prognosis of imminent death, when for the first time he found himself on the other end of an act of heroic altruism: a total stranger had saved his life. Here is his story.

My life took an unexpected turn in November 2018, when I learned I had multiple myeloma. An incurable kind of cancer, they told me. Back then, I was a firefighter working for the city of Saguenay. The diagnosis was a huge shock, obviously... but I was determined to fight. After a course of treatment, including a transplant from my own stem cells, I was able to get back to normal life and keep on advocating for firefighters as president of the union.

September 2022 sprang a whole new challenge on me: leukemia. The doctors told me I only had three weeks to live. News like that hits hard, and it wasn’t any easier the second time around. I felt the world cave in on me. That’s when the care team told me that a stem cell transplant might be a possibility, and a little door opened in front of me and let in the slightest bit of light. Unfortunately, neither my brother nor my sister were matches for me, and there was no Québec donor who matched my profile either. Hope came from an American donor.

I had the transplant in November 2022. My health gradually improved, and today my bloodwork is looking great. I make the most of every single day, and I do what I can to get more Quebecers to understand how important it is to sign up for the Stem Cell Donor Registry. The more genetic profiles we have in the bank, the more lives we can save! I have no words to express how incredibly grateful I feel. You can’t imagine how overwhelmingly connected to humanity you feel when you learn that someone, somewhere, has made the deliberate decision to save your life even though they know nothing about you—just out of pure goodwill.

And I should know it, because I got to meet the person who agreed to make the donation that saved my life. Not all stem cell transplant recipients get that chance, because the donor can always choose to stay anonymous. After the donation, my donor, Parker Lovelace, wrote me a letter explaining why he’d agreed to do it. Parker lost his father shortly after he turned 20, and he wanted to spare other families that pain. That’s why he signed up for the stem cell registry in Atlanta. In his letter, he thanked me for having “given him something priceless” too: the chance to step up and do something that changed his whole outlook on life. At the end of the letter, he said that he was open to the idea of meeting me if I liked.

How could you possibly say no to meeting somebody who saved your life and thanked you for it? After the letter, I started calling Parker “Par Cœur”—that’s how I pronounced his first name anyway, but I’d never noticed before how writing it in French, like the words by heart, fit him like a glove.

We met up on July 11, 2024, in a microbrewery in Boston. It was a very touching moment—I’ll never forget it. I broke down in tears in Parker’s arms. Here was this total stranger, and his blood was running in my veins. As a symbolic thank you, I gave him the firefighter’s helmet I wore for my last work shift. I had been meaning to give it to my daughter, but she agreed that having her dad beside her meant a lot more than a helmet to remember him by! If I’m enjoying my retirement, if I’m still here, all of that is thanks to my donor.

Héma-Québec spokesperson Josée Larivée invited me to give a talk to all the employees at her organization. That was the first of about a dozen, and counting! I love giving these talks, especially to CEGEP students.

My story has also drawn attention from the media and from my MP, Yanick Gagnon, who helped me bring my message all the way to the National Assembly of Québec. Thanks to him, I met with Minister Boulet, and a proposed regulation was tabled to add six new cancers to the list of recognized occupational diseases.

Today, I play badminton three times a week with old friends. I’m thrilled to be able to stay in shape and enjoy my life. One of my friends teases me that my donor’s cells have given me an extra boost on the badminton court—Parker’s a great athlete!—but I like to think I’m just aging like a fine wine!

Now that I’m in remission for two cancers, I don’t put too much stock in prognoses anymore. I’ve been told twice that I only had a few weeks to live. Now I make the most of every day and every minute I get with people I love. Just like when I used to fight fires, I’ve found a new way to try to save lives, by volunteering with firefighters and with Héma‑Québec.

I’ve been lucky—incredibly lucky, astoundingly lucky—and I try to pass on that luck to people who will need it in the future! There’s nothing better than helping others. That’s a simple truth that I keep in mind all the time. It’s bone deep, just like Parker’s stem cells.