Paddler propels friend’s cancer campaign
Most days of the week, Tony Schaefer can be found a few hundred metres from Mexico’s eastern coastline, a lone figure on the azure blue horizon.
“The first time I tried standup paddle boarding, I was hooked,” says the athletic 70-year-old, his tan face evidence of his outdoor obsession for the past few years.
“It’s just me, the waves and the water,” he says of a practice that for him is both physical and spiritual. “I do love the solitary nature of it.”
Lately, though, Schaefer, a native of New Mexico, has company when he heads out from his home in Puerto Aventuras, a community on Mexico’s Mayan Riveria coast.
“When I’m out there alone and the seas are rough, I can look down at him and it’s almost like he’s right there with me,” he says of the photograph of his late friend and fellow paddle boarder, Tony Johnson, that’s affixed to the tip of his board. “His spirit is with me on the water, as I do what we both loved to do.”
Above the photo of Johnson, a Calgary native, are the words “Mi Tocayo” and “Siempre 55.” Tocayo, explains Schaefer, means namesake in Spanish.
“The Mexicans refer to it as a name twin,” he says. “There’s a superstition about calling someone by their name, if you share that same name.”
Siempre, which means always, refers to the sad fact that Johnson will always be 55, the age he was when he succumbed to brain cancer this past January.
I had the privilege of meeting the Calgary businessman last fall, after he was instrumental in raising $500,000 for brain cancer research at the University of Calgary.
“I can’t sing like Gord Downie,
He was always committed to helping the underdog, supporting the research and just trying to make the world a better place.
but I do know something about raising money,” Johnson famously told anyone who would listen, when, not long after receiving the devastating news he had brain cancer, he decided in 2015 to do something to others facing his diagnosis.
Johnson had glioblastoma, the most common and most aggressive primary brain tumour for adults — and the same diagnosis faced by the late, great Downie, frontman of the iconic Canadian band the Tragically Hip.
“I knew I could reach out to my friends and contacts and they’d help me,” said Johnson, a one-time Herald journalist before he left to find success in the financial industry in the mid1990s. “I wanted to do my part to support the great research work being done in the city.”
The unbelievable half-milliondollar achievement, though, was just that — only half of what Johnson hoped to eventually raise, in pursuit of a dream to make the magic $1-million mark.
On a recent day when we meet in Puerto Aventuras — a planned community just a few minutes down the road from the popular tourist town Playa del Carmen — Schaefer talks about his plan for a fundraising initiative that will continue Johnson’s work.
While the idea is still in its early stages, it involves the athletic senior and his supporters — which include Johnson’s widow Ruth Capindale and their daughter Alana — putting together a fundraiser next year, an event in which Johnson’s beloved sport of standup paddleboarding plays a starring role.
“We’re looking at staging the first one on Jan. 1, 2019, exactly one year after Tony’s death,” he says. “It’s a good time of year, when the seas tend to be more tranquil and the weather is cooler.”
Schaefer, who will be updating his team’s plans and progress throughout the year on his Saddle to Paddle Facebook page, has also been preparing by paddling along several stretches of the Mexican coast, on what he hopes will be a sort of “regatta,” where he’ll be joined by other paddlers and supporters of the cause.
“I’ve done the southern legs, so what is next is mapping out the routes from Cancun down to Playa del Carmen and further south,” he says, adding that he, Capindale and other supporters are also looking into corporate and hotel sponsorships and partnerships for the event next year.
“We’ll be able to know what each leg of the route is like, so we can give advice and information.”
It is a beautiful tribute to a friendship that began nearly two decades earlier, when Schaefer and his wife Annette became neighbours with Johnson and Capindale at a condo complex in Puerto Aventuras.
“Tony was a big guy, with a big personality to match,” he says of his late friend. “To lose a friend like that and so young, it still just blows my mind.”
With Capindale’s blessing and assistance, Schaefer is channelling his grief into positive action.
“Tony told me in October he had a dream, where he figured out how he could raise another half million dollars,” says Capindale of her husband’s unsinkable spirit, even in his last months of life.
“He was always committed to helping the underdog, supporting the research and just trying to make the world a better place.”
The funds raised by that first half million dollars has been put to good use, with neuro-oncologist Dr. John Kelley, who is a surgeon, clinician and researcher at the University of Calgary, leading a team investigating the biology of brain tumours as well as the development of novel surgical techniques.
Kelly’s research also includes a new modelling system for studying glioblastomas, the first of its kind in Western Canada.
While he may have lost a cherished friend, Schaefer says Johnson’s kindness and generosity when facing down a terminal illness have infused him with a desire to continue his dream.
“This will help us to keep Tony’s memory alive,” he says of next January’s paddle board ride, which he hopes will bring out other riders from all over North America. “I’m stoked to get out on the water and do this for him.”