Family life and volunteer work are fixtures in Tanya (Nash) Benoit’s life, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
The 32-year-old wife and mother has called Flin Flon home since 1991 when she moved from Elliot Lake, Ontario, with her mother, father and brother.
Benoit attended Parkdale School, Ruth Betts Community School, Hapnot Collegiate and Many Faces Education Centre before returning to Hapnot to receive her high school diploma in 2001.
Following high school, she completed a business administration course at UCN in Flin Flon.
In 2007, she married Jefferson Benoit. They have two sons, Korey, 11, and Patryck, 7, who currently attend Ruth Betts.
Volunteering
Through her extensive volunteer work and love of Flin Flon, Tanya has become a familiar face in the community.
She has volunteered with a dozen organizations, including the Flin Flon Bombers, Flin Flon Minor Hockey Association, Flin Flon, Creighton and Area SPCA, Lord’s Bounty Food Bank and Phantom Lake Soccer Club, to name a few.
Tanya has also helped organize many benefit socials and meat draws.
Her volunteer work started as a teenager while learning to fundraise for an upcoming trip. She was a member of a youth darts program and planned to compete in South Africa.
“We had to raise money and my dad was teaching me how to ask for money the proper way – apparently ‘hey, give me money’ isn’t the right way,” Tanya said with a laugh.
Once she got a taste of fundraising and volunteering, there was no turning back.
“I used to love it a lot, and I still do,” she said. “But now someone can walk up to me on a Friday and say that they want to have a meat draw the next weekend. I know exactly who I have to call and what I have to do.”
More than anything else about volunteering, Tanya loves helping
people.
“I love seeing the look on people’s faces when you can hand over [money raised],” she said. “It’s the pure joy of knowing you’re helping another human being or a pet or someone in need. It makes you feel like you’re doing something better in the world.”
Though all of that volunteering brings her great joy, Tanya, her smile ever present, has had to push through major life obstacles.
The Diagnosis
Tanya’s life changed in 2009 when she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, at the age of 27.
“I woke up one morning and had lost the feeling in the tips of my fingers on my right hand,” she recalled.
Within a week, Tanya had lost all feeling in the right side of her body.
“I couldn’t do anything,” she said. “My right side was useless.”
If her diagnosis of MS wasn’t enough, Tanya had contracted shingles at the same time because of her compromised immune system.
“I spent weeks and weeks in pain until we finally figured out what was going on,” she said.
An MRI showed Tanya had 12 lesions – or “dead spots,” as they were described to her – on her brain.
“It’s a dead spot in your brain that will never come back,” she explained.
Tanya now has between 20 and 30 lesions on her brain. Each lesion, roughly the size of the tip of a pen, relates to a different symptom.
“Apparently [doctors] can see [which one effects what], but they don’t elaborate,” she said. “But I’ve never asked. I’ve never wanted to fully find out. I think that would be kind of scary, to be honest.”
Tanya’s symptoms started as loss of feeling in her fingers and then her entire right side. She has gained feeling back in parts of her body, but continues to fight different symptoms each day.
“I still have a lot of cognitive issues,” she said. “If I get stressed out I slur [and] I can’t form a sentence. I haven’t had feeling in my hand since I was diagnosed and I have a tingly-numb feelings in my legs all the time.”
Tanya’s stage of MS is referred to as remitting relapsing. Each time she goes through an episode, or flare up, she returns to the level she was at before it began.
Since her diagnosis, she has hovered between remitting relapsing and what is often the next stage of MS, known as secondary progressive.
Basically, when “you have a flare up…you lose something every time you relapse,” Tanya said.
Tanya’s most recent symptom is the loss of feeling in her feet.
“They could be soaking wet, hot, cold – I can’t tell,” she said. “I don’t find that I’m getting worse, but I think it’s my family and everything I do that keeps me up and standing still.”
Tanya’s MS reminds her of her love, and need, to volunteer.
“I know a lot of people say I need to slow down and to stop doing so much, but my brain says if I slow down and stop it’s going to just realize that’s how it’s supposed to be,” she said. “I do know when to slow down and when I need a break.”
That said, Tanya says sometimes she needs to just keep pushing.
“I feel like volunteer work gives me that ‘get up and go,’” she says. “It makes me think like I’m doing something with my life.”
Aside from being a mother, wife, daughter and friend, Tanya says she will continue to volunteer as long as she can.
She also continues to work, currently at Canadian Tire.
Since she was 15, Tanya has held a variety of jobs in Flin Flon. Her first job was with the Women’s Safe Haven. Since then, she has worked at various retail stores and restaurants.
The game
Another interest of Tanya’s is darts. She followed in the footsteps of her parents as she began playing the game at the age of five while still in Elliot Lake.
“I would be standing on a chair four feet away from the board and learning how to shoot,” she recalled.
When the Nash family moved to Flin Flon, there wasn’t an organization that allowed children to play darts.
So Kevin Nash, Tanya’s father, along with a few other Flin Flonners got together and formed a league for the youth. The next hurdle was finding a location.
“There was a group of about 15 of us,” Tanya said, “and we used to go every Tuesday night and alternate between houses.”
Tanya progressed quickly in the game as she earned titles locally, regionally, provincially and nationally.
At the age of 17, she was a member of the 1999 World Cup team in Durban, South Africa, representing Canada. She placed roughly fifth among 19 countries with youth representation.
Tanya continued to play in Flin Flon, but put her darts down to raise a family. She has since picked them back up, but will only be playing as her schedule allows.
Whether through sports, volunteering or persevering in the face of adversity, Tanya Benoit is truly leaving her mark on her community.
