Halifax hospital to unveil mural of young hockey player who died of rare heart disease

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HALIFAX -- A mural to be unveiled today at Halifax's QEII Health Sciences Centre will pay tribute to a 16-year-old hockey player who lost his life to a rare, inherited heart disease.

Jordan Boyd was attending a training camp for the Acadie-Bathurst Titan when he collapsed on the ice in August 2013.

His condition wasn't diagnosed until after his death, when it was determined he had arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy.

Over the past six years, an annual hockey tournament organized in memory of the teen from Bedford, N.S., has raised more than $800,000 for research into inherited heart diseases.

The money has also been used to increase access to automated external defibrillators, portable devices that can deliver an electric shock to the heart to stop an irregular heartbeat following sudden cardiac arrest.

In 2017, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League announced it would improve first-aid protocols following Jordan's death.