What kind of coincidences life sometimes has in store: In 2017, during a registration campaign for the bone marrow donor center DKMS at his school in Bad Hersfeld, the student Jonathan Kehl put a cotton swab in his mouth without thinking anything about it.

Eve sleeper

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Five years later, Kehl, now a student, flies to Canada to meet a man he has given a second life to.

And since his name is Dominic LeBlanc and he is a minister in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet, and the two politicians have also been friends since childhood, Trudeau would also like to say thank you to the German.

The prime minister's photographer captures the scene.

"I never expected that I would ever be asked as a donor," says Jonathan Kehl, "and then something like that".

LeBlanc had blood cancer

In the fall of 2021, Kehl, who is now 23, received a letter from the DKMS in which he read the name Dominic LeBlanc for the first time.

In 2019, the young man from Bad Hersfeld underwent stem cell removal.

Immediately afterwards he was told that his stem cells had gone to a man from Canada.

In many countries, including Canada, after a two-year period of anonymity, the identity of the recipient can be revealed to the donor – if the latter so wishes.

"I typed the name into the search engine.

And there were a lot of hits.

It was a shock at first,” reports Kehl.

The now 54-year-old Dominic LeBlanc, lawyer and minister for intergovernmental affairs and infrastructure, among other things, was diagnosed in 2019 with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer that originates in the lymphatic system.

In a DKMS video, he tells how shocked he and his family were when the doctors told him that he probably only had a few months to live if no solution was found - only a stem cell donation could save him.

LeBlanc's doctors in Montreal query the international databases with his tissue characteristics.

Jonathan Kehl was identified as LeBlanc's genetic twin: the person who has the same key tissue characteristics as the patient and is therefore a possible stem cell donor.

"We have a connection for life"

Jonathan Kehl only had a short time to digest the initial shock of his prominent twin before he received an email from him.

LeBlanc had them specially translated into German.

Kehl, who is studying religion and biology in Kassel, responded that he was grateful to learn that LeBlanc was doing well.

Shortly thereafter, the two men spoke to each other for the first time via video telephony.

"I sat in my room, he in his office in Ottawa in front of the Canadian flag," says Kehl.

During this conversation, the minister invited the student to visit him in Canada.

Due to the pandemic, among other things, the trip had to be postponed again and again.

The meeting finally took place at the end of September.

Together with a good friend, who was invited to Canada by the minister, Jonathan Kehl first traveled to Ottawa, where he also met Premier Trudeau.

LeBlanc then took the two Germans to his hometown of Moncton on the east coast.

It was there that Kehl met LeBlanc's wife and stepson.

The Canadian spoke of Kehl's "particular generosity" and his "pure goodness of heart".

Kehl describes LeBlanc as a very approachable person who radiates joie de vivre and enjoys every day.

A return visit is now planned for 2023.

The Canadian twin wants to see where the German lives.

"We have a connection for life now," Dominic LeBlanc said.