disease

As hockey fans await the Stanley Cup’s possible arrival north of the border in 2011, Canadians across the country have another reason to cheer. The two largest national cancer charities announced on June 3 that they would be teaming up to expand the popular Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer fundraiser to towns and communities across Canada over the next two years.

The Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation (PMHF) and the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) are planning to extend what is already the largest road hockey fundraiser in the world beyond the Toronto event, which has raised millions of dollars for cancer research since its inception last year, to key markets in 2012.

PMHF president and CEO Paul Alofs said that the idea for the two organizations to collaborate started when he sat down to have a beer with his good friend, Peter Goodhand, the president and CEO for the CCS.

“We talked about the fact that on these big events, we should really be collaborating,” Alofs told Samaritanmag. “Princess Margaret is such a force in Toronto and [the CCS] right across Canada. We hope that Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer will be a little bit like the Terry Fox [Run]. It’ll be in small communities right across the country.”

By expanding this charity event, the CCS’s provincial organizations can help assist specific research centres in other regions of Canada. Specific dates and locations of the 2012 events have not yet been announced.

Jacob Schwartz is a modern miracle. Most children afflicted with Canavan disease, a rare neurodegenerative ailment that shuts down their body muscle by muscle, rarely see their fifth birthday. However, Jacob has defied the odds and then some.

“He is completely a modern miracle,” agrees Ellen Schwartz, Jacob’s mom and co-founder – with his dad Jeff – of Jacob’s Ladder, the Canadian Foundation for the Control of Neurodegenerative Disease.

“When he was diagnosed at four months, we were told he wouldn’t live past his fourth birthday. And although he’s very disabled, he just turned 13. We just had a Bar Mitzvah.”

Life for Jacob is a daily struggle.

There’s an emotional moment near the end of the documentary The Story Of Furious Pete where competitive eater Peter Czerwinski wolfs down an estimated 10 lbs of ribs, hugs his mother and tearfully tells her, “All for you, mom, all for you.”

That might seem like a strange action to dedicate to your mother, but it was a stunt to raise money for the MS Society of Canada in her honour. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system, eight years ago.

“I see my mother every day and to see her suffering with it, I’m an only child and she’s pretty much my best friend, and anything I can do to help her out and support the cause in any way, I’ll do,” Czerwinski tells Samaritanmag.

In The Story Of Furious Pete, which screens at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival (April 29 to May 9; check www.hotdocs.ca for dates/times), director George Tsioutsioulas captures his unique story from anorexic teen to champion competitive eater. In the film, Czerwinski, now 24, explains at a meeting with the Mississauga, Ontario, chapter of the MS Society, “My mom’s always been there for me. She helped me get through my illness. I want to help her.”