The telescope has been set up along Dallas Road for days, with no obvious owner in sight. “I find it quite surprising,” says one man passing by. It’s sitting on a tripod facing the ocean and mountains. A hand-written note taped to its side says, ‘Look.’

“Oh beautiful!” says a woman who accepts its invitation. “Somebody’s obviously giving you something to think about,” says another man, who declines to look through it.

A woman listening to music from her hometown, says you’d never see a telescope left like this in Brasilia. At least, not for long. “One minute!” Alyne laughs. “[Then] somebody would take it.”

That’s one of the many reasons Alyne and her husband moved to Canada; to create a better life their daughter. 

After six years of trying to expand their family, Alyne found out she was pregnant last summer. “The day that I figured this out, I just dancing around the house, “ she says.

As she looks through the telescope, Alyne says the view towards 2019 had seemed so good. 

She was planning to finish school so she could continue her career in Canada as a civil engineer before welcoming her baby. But those plans changed when, six months pregnant, she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. “I was carrying the life and the death inside me at the same time.”

In February, Alyne had her first mastectomy. After the baby is born, she’ll have her second. “The doctors gave me two weeks for breastfeed,” she explains. “And then I start chemo and stop breastfeed.”

Although she’s mourned what she’s lost, Alyne is grateful for what she’s discovered. “I’m still the same person,” she says. Still the same person, fighting to be the woman her girls will aspire to be.

“I want she be strong,” Alyne says when asked what she hopes her girls will learn from her. “Strong women is the future. Never give up.”

So today Alyne will finish her schooling. Tomorrow, she will be induced. And then she’ll meet Isla Victoria. The baby’s first name was picked by her soon-to-be big sister. The second name by Alyne and her husband. It’s not for this place. Instead, it’s because “Victoria” in Portuguese means “Victory.”