Canadian couple takes their kids on a world tour before they go completely blind

On March 21, the Pelletier family took off from Toronto for a world tour. Sebastian and Edith decide to actually travel the world with their four children before they completely lose their sight. Indeed, as CNN points out, three out of four children have a rare genetic disease, retinitis pigmentosa, that will leave them completely blind for years to come.

Pelletier’s parents noticed that their eldest daughter had vision problems at the age of three. After seeing experts and learning about the diagnosis made on Mia, Sebastian and Edith learned in 2019 that their two boys, Colin (7 years old) and Laurent (5 years old), also had retinitis pigmentosa. According to the parents, they can go blind as adults. Only nine-year-old Singh is not affected by the disease.

To allow their kids to discover as many things as possible before they lose their sight completely, Sebastian and Edith take them on a world tour. His doctor advised him to give “visual memories” to his children, which he took as an invitation to visit. “I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to show them an elephant in a book, I’m going to see them a real elephant. And I’m going to fill their visual memory with the best and most beautiful. Images I do’ I can,’ said the mother on CNN. So the small family began a list of what the kids wanted to see once in their lives. “Mia wanted to go horseback riding, while Laurent wanted to juice on a camel. It was very specific and a lot of fun,” Edith recalls.

Pelletiers had planned to hit the road for Russia in July 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic decided otherwise. So they finally left for Namibia in March 2022. They then went back to Turkey before starting their trip to Mongolia at the end of July. They travel by van most of the time, and camp along the way. Currently, Pelletier – who Tell their stories on social networks – are on their way to Indonesia, after spending five weeks in the “Land of Blue Skies”.

For parents, going around the world was the best way to teach their kids about life and resilience.

“Travel is something you can learn from. It is enjoyable and fun, but it can also be very difficult. You can be uncomfortable. You can get tired. There is frustration. So there is a lot to learn from the journey itself.” , she explained, glad her children are “overly curious” and impressed by their ease in adapting to the always-easy conditions of their travels. “No matter how difficult their life is, I wanted to show them that they are lucky to have running water at home and are able to go to school every day with beautiful coloring books,” she said.