Ottawa-
A stem cell transplant will forever link Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc to a young man from Germany.
“I would be dead,” LeBlanc told Evan Solomon on CTV News Channel’s Power Play on Monday. The minister was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2019.
Jonathan Kehl was only 21 when he appeared on a record as a match for LeBlanc. The two men were strangers to each other when Kehl made the donation. They would get to know each other two years after the transplant.
LeBlanc and Kehl met in person in Ottawa for the first time on Sunday. They say it has been an emotional 24 hours.
“If they hadn’t found the perfect genetic match with the same blood type, and it was this remarkable young man in Germany…I absolutely wouldn’t have seen fall 2019,” LeBlanc said.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Jonathan Kehl discuss stem cell transplantation in the video at the top of this article.