Boy, 4, gets hard-to-find teddy bears he needs just in time for cancer surgery

To help him brave surgery, four-year-old Jaxon Morton always holds tight to his teddy bear, Beary.

The boy from Saint John who loves making people laugh, Jurassic Park movies, and is known as "Super Jax" to his family, has neuroblastoma — a childhood cancer that starts in the nerve cells.

It's meant many surgeries and even more days in the hospital with Beary by his side.

But all that love has left the teddy bear in rough shape. His eyes are starting to fall out, his bottom has ripped and his tags are tattered.

'They are little superheroes'

Jaxon's family was desperately searching for a replacement, and thanks to the kindness of strangers, he received two new bears on Tuesday just in time for a major surgery at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax on Wednesday.

"He was so excited," Tiffany Glazier, Jaxon's aunt, said late Tuesday.

The bears were donated by two boys not much older than Jaxon — a boy from Caraquet, N.B., and eight-year-old Landon Fougere from Dartmouth, N.S.

"They warm my heart. They are amazing. They are little superheroes all by themselves," Glazier told CBC Radio's Maritime Noon earlier in the day.

"And it's a very major surgery so these bears are definitely going to help him through it."

The search for another Beary

Beloved and bedraggled Beary has been a source of strength "through every chemo treatment and every operation [Jaxon's] had to date," she said.

In the past, Jaxon's surgeon has even outfitted Beary in surgical gear so he could be by the boy's side in the operating room.

"It meant the world," she said. "He was calm.... and was able to wake up to Beary in his room."

So when Glazier realized how damaged her nephew's bear was, she started searching for a replacement. She emailed Dollarama, where the stuffed animal was purchased two years ago, and even travelled around New Brunswick looking in stores herself.

But it wasn't until the manager of the Fredericton location put a call out on Facebook that two families responded saying they owned identical bears.

Glazier gets emotional thinking about how many people have jumped into action to help, saying she never expected little boys would offer up their own toys.

Glazier and Jaxon's mom, Courtney, presented Jaxon with the new bears on the eve of his latest surgery so the little boy could have an entire team of teddies cheering him on Wednesday.

The plan was to tell Jaxon the new arrivals are actually Beary's brother and sister because, as Glazier put it: "Nobody can replace Beary."