Open road beckons

Couple heading to Maritimes on a new Harley

You leave everything behind, away you go. Holly figures out where we’re going and I’m the driver.

When John Wilton saw the look on his wife’s face, it was the happiest he’d seen her in a long time.

“She was kind of like a small child at Christmas time,” he said.

Holly had learned she was a recipient of the Cameco Touchdown for Dreams program. Her dream of touring the Maritimes for the first time on a brand new, top of the line Harley-Davidson would come true.

“I got some tour guide books. We picked out some places like Peggy’s Cove, Pier 21 and then there’s a route to go on a bike in northern Nova Scotia,” Holly said.

Holly was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2008, then cancer near her bowel in 2013, and now is being treated for liver cancer.

That last diagnosis came in January — just a month after John was also diagnosed with bowel cancer. Both have had to leave their jobs.

The couple, from Stoughton, about 90 minutes southeast of Regina, applied to the Touchdown for Dreams program and forgot about it until they got a call last month from Cameo and Saskatchewan Roughriders officials.

“With both of us being diagnosed, this is great. It’s a relief,” Holly said.

“It’s going to be really an awesome adventure to go on with my husband and just enjoy it.”

At the moment Holly has two sessions of chemotherapy left. John is doing so well he’s going off chemotherapy for a month to see how his cancer responds.

John and Holly both grew up with motorcycles — they still have a working 1946 Harley-Davidson bought by John’s father — and got back into riding about seven years ago.

Last year, they went on a 6,400-kilometre road trip to Nashville and Memphis.

They enjoy the freedom of biking, and getting to see everything from a different perspective.

“You have to be looking on a bike, whereas in a vehicle you can have a nap,” Holly said. “It’s great,” John said. “You leave everything behind, away you go. Holly figures out where we’re going and I’m the driver.

“When we do stuff like that, I don’t care where we go, what we see.”

MICHELLE BERG Holly Wilton, who has been battling three different types of cancer, and her husband John Wilton, who has been dealing with cancer as well, will travel through the Maritimes on a Harley-Davidson, thanks to the Cameco Touchdown for Dreams program.