Both sisters were diagnosed with Graves' disease as teenagers, though DeBues-Stafford's case would prove more manageable than Lucia's in the years ahead, hindering the latter's athletics career.

[4] She was subsequently accepted to study psychology at the University of Toronto's Victoria College, during which time she competed for the Varsity Blues athletics squad.

[5] Appearing at a senior international championship for the first time, DeBues-Stafford won the silver medal in the women's 1500 m event at the 2015 Summer Universiade in Gwangju.

DeBues-Stafford competing in the women's 1500 m at the 2016 World Indoor Championships in Portland, finishing twelfth in the heats and thus not advancing to the event final.

[13] On 11 February 2022, at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston, DeBues-Stafford broke the North, Central American and Caribbean record in the indoor 5000 metres with a time of 14m 31.38s, improving the mark set by USA's Shalane Flanagan in 2009 by more than 15 seconds.

[15] In April 2022, DeBues-Stafford announced that she was relocating from Portland to Victoria, citing the ongoing doping controversy around former training partner Shelby Houlihan as having been detrimental to her preparations for the Tokyo Olympics.

[16] Due to developing a stress reaction in her sacrum, she was forced to end her season prematurely, foregoing both the 2022 Commonwealth Games and the 2022 World Athletics Championships.

[18] The daughter of James Stafford and Maria Luisa Gardner, DeBues-Stafford has a younger brother, Nicholas, and her sister Lucia.