Sunday was the CIBC Run For the Cure and it was the first time I’ve been involved in a fundraising event since I did the Swim-a-thon…and that was a very, very long time ago. I joined a team, a small team, made up of a friend, her sister-in-law (the survivor in pink), and daughter, cousin and wife, and a friend of our lady in pink. Last year Karen only had Deb to walk with..I thought that rather criminal so decided to join in. I’m no runner, so I was on a very safe team…definitely not athletic fiends on Team Karen! In fact, we were almost the last off the line since Karen was so late. But we found her, got her pink t-shirt on, and off we set. We had fabulous weather, there were bands and people cheering along the entire route. It was pretty uplifting and pretty fabulous.
Off the start line we passed Premier Campbell and all we thought was “Brave politician to be within striking range right now what with that HST and all…”
There were over 10,000 people participating, and it makes your realize that no-one is untouched by breast cancer. At one point I was behind a little child, not more than 3, who has a sign on his back that was handwritten and said “I’m running for Momy” It was wonderful, and heartbreaking.
The Vancouver run raised over $1.2 million dollars ($25 million Canada-wide) and it’s wonderful, but I also wish, as Deb put, that all of the cancer funds raised could go into a pot for cancer research in general because there are many other cancers that no one speaks about and about which we have very little information and these get precious little funding. Deb mentioned having been in the Brain cancer run and Vancouver was overjoyed to have raised $45,000. One single team raised close to that for this breast cancer run. Karen survived breast cancer, her brother did not survive brain cancer.
I think we have a long way to go…..