HISTORY

As things often do, the Run, Walk & Roll for Cancer Prevention – now The Cancer Prevention Challenge – started with a conversation. With no funding, but tons of enthusiasm and support from many people, the Cancer Prevention Challenge was born. In 2004, the plan was to partly raise funds to help fund the book being called Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic and then help get a Canadian prevention group (Prevent Cancer Now) off the ground. From 2004 to 2008, the geographic focus was mainly Ottawa’s great race weekend at the end of May, although we did have events in London and Windsor one year. Then, with interest for cancer prevention coming from people across Canada we decided to widen the scope. Hence, the transformation in 2009 to The Cancer Prevention Challenge.

The Cancer Prevention Challenge

Under this banner, all the people who want to play euchre, sell cupcakes, attend a dinner theatre night or raise funds for cancer prevention don’t feel either geographically excluded – or compelled to exercise at the same time!

Notable events of the past couple of years were Diana Daghofer’s inspiring Red Mountain Challenge, prevention talks, pyramid climbs, delicious dinners, including the movie-inspired menu prepared by WHEN supporters Marci and Greg, the CAW Durham Region Racers Sexy Laundry escapade at the Class Act Dinner Theatre in Whitby, Ontario, and so much more.

Each year we look forward to your creative challenge ideas, and we thank you in advance for your support.  The Cancer Prevention Challenge runs from August 15 to October 31 each year.

IMPACT

From 2004 to 2008 – the first five years of The Cancer Prevention Challenge/Run, Walk & Roll for Cancer Prevention – our participants raised more than $300,000 for three ‘big picture’ projects:

Grants from the 2004 and 2005 Run, Walk & Roll for Cancer Prevention supported the research and writing of the New Society Publishers’ book, Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic, published in May 2007. Preventing cancer requires effective strategies and concerted action by all levels of government, by industry, transportation and agricultural sectors, and by health, labour, consumer, environmental groups and individual citizens – and Cancer: 101 Solutions‘ goal was to gather all of this information in one book. The first section of Cancer: 101 Solutions lays out the problems, including the failure of the ‘War on Cancer’, regulatory neglect of occupational and environmental carcinogens, the loss of nutrients in food, and the vulnerability of fetuses and infants to toxic substances. The ’solutions’ includes hundreds of initiatives and programs that reduce or eliminate hazards that make us vulnerable to cancer. For more information about this award-winning book, see co-author Guy Dauncey’s web site, Earth Future.

Funds from the 2005 and 2006 Run Walk & Roll/Cancer Prevention Challenge supported the landmark May 24-27, 2007 conference in Ottawa, Cancer: It’s About Prevention. It’s About Time! Outstanding keynote speakers at the conference included Dr. Devra Davis, author of When Smoke Ran Like Water (2002) and The Secret History of the War on Cancer (2007); Sandra Steingraber, cancer survivor, poet, mother of two and author of Living Downstream (1996) and Having Faith (2000); Larry Stoffman, Chair of the National Committee on Environmental and Occupational Exposures, Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control; and Beverley Thorpe, Clean Production Action. Action-oriented experts facilitated a wide range of participatory workshops on primary cancer prevention, and strategies for positive change. Workshop leaders included Debra Lynn Dadd, author of the acclaimed ‘bible’ of green living, Home Safe Home, Madeleine Bird, Breast Cancer Action Montreal, on toxic personal products and their alternatives, Mae Burrows of BC’s Labour Environmental Alliance Society (LEAS), and many more.

In 2007 and 2008, the general funds from The Run, Walk & Roll/Cancer Prevention Challenge supported the organizing and incorporation of the non-profit organization, Prevent Cancer Now. PCN was lead organizer of the Ottawa conference, and has been involved in several campaigns to raise awareness about the cancer epidemic in Canada, and the major opportunities to reduce cancer incidence through primary prevention.