About a thousand Bellerose students will finish a 17-year round-trip to the moon this week as part of the annual Bellerose Bikeathon.
Some 800 Bellerose Composite students got their pedals moving March 4 as they set off on the 17th annual Bellerose Bikeathon – an event that sees virtually the whole school ride stationary bikes for 48 hours to raise money for cancer research.
Bikeathon teams marched into the school’s atrium Wednesday morning as a band belted out the theme song from Avengers: Endgame. Many sported silly costumes and were dressed as pirates, Pac Man, Toy Story aliens, the cast of Friends and the Pope.
This year’s event kicked off with a video clip of a space-shuttle launch – a reference to this year’s theme of pedalling for the possible.
People used to think flying to the moon was impossible, but we did it, said Bikeathon co-ordinator and co-founder Sue Leighton in an interview. Bikeathon students have almost pedalled the equivalent of a trip to the moon and back in the last 17 years, and would finish their round trip this year.
“We’re moving to a place where we believe a cure for cancer is possible,” Leighton said.
Leighton said students spent the last two months doing bake sales, bottle drives, and going door-to-door to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the Alberta Cancer Foundation and Kids with Cancer, and would raise more cash Thursday through a head-shave for the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
The final count was still being tabulated when this story went to press, but teacher Michael Hutchings said Bellerose had racked up at least $240,000 in donations this year, bringing them to a 17-year total of $2.92 million.
This fundraiser is all about teaching kids how to give of themselves, a lesson many alumni take to heart as they come back again and again to participate, Leighton said.
“This is an exercise of hope.”
Biking for hope
One shining light of hope at the Bikeathon’s kickoff Wednesday was honorary Bellerose Bulldog Laura Anderson, who led the countdown for the event’s launch.
A year ago, the Paul Kane student told the Bikeathon crowd of how she had been diagnosed with a rare type of soft-tissue cancer and had started intense treatment for it.
Anderson told the Bikeathon crowd that it had been a year of hell since then, with some 56 rounds of chemotherapy, 28 radiation treatments, and many unplanned trips to the hospital.
“Even when I was home, I felt awful. I would sit in my basement. I couldn’t go out with my friends. I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t go to school,” she said, fighting back tears.
“I wasn’t being a teenager when I should have been.”
Anderson said funds raised by the Bikeathon for Kids with Cancer helped her family pay for food and hospital parking, and also funded the research and doctors needed for her treatment. Now, she’s graduated from high school, is getting her hair back, and is preparing to start an arts degree at Concordia University this fall.
“On Feb. 25, I found out I was three months cancer-free,” she said, to cheers from the crowd.
John Mackey, director of the clinical trial unit at the Cross Cancer Institute, told the crowd that fundraisers like the Bikeathon would next month fund a new clinical trial in Edmonton of CAR T-cell therapy – a treatment that genetically engineers a patient’s own immune cells to attack cancer.
“Basically any kinds of cancer you can imagine is potentially going to be treatable with this within the next handful of years,” he said, without the hair loss and years in and out of hospital most patients currently have to endure.
“We are making huge progress.”
Anderson said she planned to start an arts degree at Concordia University this fall – her first step toward becoming a teacher at Bellerose.
“You all hold a special place in my heart,” she told the crowd, and she was glad to ride alongside them as an honorary Bulldog.
