Group prepares for 900-km cycling trip for charity
More than 40 riders, who have raised $480,000 for Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health (CASA) in the last two years, have signed up for the Minds Over Mountains cycle tour.
“We hit the road June 18 on a 900-km trip through some of Canada’s best scenery,” says Allan Mayer, the veteran route planner.
“We’ll begin with a ride along the Vancouver seashore before taking the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler.”
From there, Lillooet, 70 Mile House, Clearwater, Blue River and B.C’s Terracana Resort are on our route before we celebrate in Jasper.
Two years ago, I set a target of $500,000 for our rides to help the CASA Centre. The just-opened $24-million facility helps children, adolescents and their families with mental-health issues.
“You are only $10,000 short of your goal and this year’s ride, and your June 18 Pinot on the Patio fundraiser at the Royal Glenora Club should push you well over the top,” said CASA Foundation executive director Nadine Samycia.
This is my 10th year as honourary chair of our group’s adventures and I am handing the ride over to CASA, which is adopting it as a signature fundraising event.
The highlight in a decade for me was realizing a dream three years ago when we brought a three-metre tall totem pole back 1,800 km from Haida Gwaii and raised more than $420,000 for the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
Perhaps the most significant fact I have learned in two years of helping CASA is the foundation for sound mental health is built early in life.
“Important brain-shaping experiences include children’s interactions and relationships with parents, caregivers, relatives, teachers and peers,” says CASA CEO Denise Milne.
“To reduce the risk for mental illness, including addiction, we need to support all children and their families in building a foundation of resilience.”
CASA treats more than 4,000 youngsters up to 18 years of age every year, combining clinical care, research, education and advocacy.
In collaboration with the University of Alberta, CASA is now creating a Research Chair in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
My cycling friends will push even harder on the hills this year knowing we are helping the chair work on research, recruit and mentor a team of junior researchers and develop partnerships around the world.
“Ultimately, the chair will build the foundation for a centre of excellence in research and training,” says Milne.
WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
The familiar site on my television set Wednesday was London’s Westminster Bridge, where a man had just murdered four people.
Police say he was a terrorist hoping to strike fear into people close to their parliament, the oldest in the world.
In the mid-1960s, before coming to Canada, my beat for the London Evening Standard was covering Scotland Yard, across the road from the Houses of Parliament.
After work, I would walk across Westminster Bridge and take a
To reduce the risk for mental illness, including addiction, we need to support all children and their families in building a foundation of resilience.
train home from Waterloo Station.
I often stopped to gaze back across the River Thames to a city centre founded two millenniums ago that has become a global centre of finance, arts, commerce, entertainment and tourism.
Both my parents lost their Glasgow family homes to Nazi bombs and I relished studying both world wars at school.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler sought to destroy the British RAF before attacking the UK and, wrongly thinking he had nearly succeeded, he began bombing London to draw “the last” RAF fighters into the air.
Before realizing eight months later his efforts were in vain, the German Luftwaffe had destroyed or damaged more than one million London homes and killed more than 40,000 civilians.
King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth, mother of the present Queen, visited bomb sites, giving people reassurance and ignoring Foreign Office advice to leave the country.
A network of psychiatric clinics opened to receive mental casualties from the bombing, but were closed due to a lack of need.
The stress did cause many anxiety attacks, miscarriages and other ailments. But the number of suicides and drunkenness declined and people found the best way to retain mental stability was to be with family.
Hitler probably shook in anger when told some 13,000 Londoners attended a cricket match at Lord’s, the game’s shrine.
We sincerely mourn with the families of the three people killed at Westminster.
It was also a senseless waste of the terrorist’s life. Most Londoners blinked and carried on.
Meanwhile, Canadians telephoning London possibly hit a peak Wednesday. It took hours to contact my 95-year-old aunt Lily Lees, who lives near St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Do those terrorists not know what many of us have survived?” asked my aunt, who escaped when bombs flattened her street in 1941. “Londoners aren’t scared. And things are back to normal.
“These thugs will be brought to justice and I want to see the faces of men who say they kill because their God wants them to.”