Green Shirt Day is back, and Canadians are being encouraged once more to register as organ donors.
The day is a national campaign rooted in the legacy of an Alberta-born junior hockey player killed eight years ago in the Humboldt Broncos crash in Saskatchewan.
Twenty-one-year-old defenceman Logan Boulet died from his injuries on April 7, 2018, and his parents said it had been his wish to donate.
Green Shirt Day organizers have said that decision helped save six lives.
In the weeks that followed, about 150,00 people registered to become organ donors, launching what became known as the "Logan Boulet Effect" and Green Shirt Day.
The crash killed 15 others and injured 13, after a truck driver went through a stop sign at a remote intersection in Saskatchewan and into the path of the team's bus.
The Saskatchewan government has said that the province continues to see organ transplant donation registration rates go up. The registry, which started in September 2020, has seen more than 30,000 residents register their intent to donate organs and/or tissues.
"On Green Shirt Day, we honour Logan Boulet and the powerful legacy of organ and tissue donation," Scott Moe said on social media Tuesday.
"Across Saskatchewan, families are choosing to give the gift of life and are bringing hope to others."
Nicole de Guia, manager of organ donation and transplantation with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, said data from 2024 shows that 3,203 transplants were performed in Canada. Data from 2025 is not yet available.
"We still have quite a bit of demand for these vital surgeries, and there's still much more of an unmet need," de Guia said in an interview.
There were 4,044 Canadians on a waiting list for an organ as of Dec. 31, 2024, while 691 people died or were withdrawn from the list.
She said, nationally, there has been an increase in transplant surgeries in the last 10 years.
But data from 2024 shows the first decrease in deceased donors in five years — about six per cent compared to the year before. Living donations saw a smaller decrease in 2024 with 1.7 per cent.
"For the most part, a living donor can only provide a kidney or a part of a liver, so we really rely on deceased donors to be able to supply these vital life-saving surgeries," she said.
De Guia added that it's still too soon to tell if the decrease is a trend that will continue or just a fluctuation.
The institute — an independent not-for-profit organization that collects, analyzes and shares data on Canada's health systems — started a project in 2023 funded by Health Canada for a new data system called CanODT. It's aimed to modernize organ donation and transplantation reporting across Canada.
De Guia said there's still a lot of manual data entry in the transplant process and the new system is designed to better support interprovincial organ transfers.
"This is a precious resource and it needs to be very timely to share data about organs that are available and to match them up with those who need them the most," she said.
The institute does not have data specifically about Green Shirt Day. But de Guia said these kinds of campaigns are important for starting conversations within families about donation.
"It really starts with an individual and their family's consent to be able to donate an organ," she said.
"So with campaigns such as Green Shirt Day and others, no doubt it's making a difference in a number of people's lives."
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/David Rossiter
