It was fitting that, as the Tour de Rock team rolled in to Happy Valley Elementary School in Langford, Hannah Day was celebrating her first day of kindergarten.
Hannah rode in a limo, dressed in a Cinderella costume, a five-year-old excited to resume the routines of a regular kid instead of hospital visits and chemotherapy.
The Langford girl was diagnosed in 2012 with a rare cancer, called rhabdomyosarcoma, that attacks muscle tissue, and with leukemia in 2013.
As her new classmates assembled in the gym to welcome the Tour de Rock riders, her mom, Brooke Ervin, told them: “Hannah is just excited to make some new friends. Her hair might be a bit short, but she’s just like you.”
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Tour rider Lori Lumley of the Victoria police said she was happy that Hannah was sitting next to kids her age and her teacher, Kelly Hancock.
“It was so inspiring to see her,” Lumley said of her junior rider. “As she succeeds in overcoming her cancer, we also succeed in having a successful fundraising campaign, so it’s nice to see the two things intersect.”
Hannah will make a gradual entry into full-time classes starting in the next couple of weeks, once staff can be trained and an educational assistant assigned to help with Hannah’s health and safety needs.
“We are making sure the right supports are in place to ensure a safe and positive transition to school for Hannah and making sure her medical needs are taken care of,” said Happy Valley principal Karen DeCicco.
Of main concern is the catheter in Hannah’s chest that had been used to administer chemotherapy and is now used for medications and to obtain blood samples.
Staff needs to be trained how to respond in case any of the cables pull out during play or an accident at school, Ervin said.
Happy Valley student Ella Steele, who earlier shaved her head to raise money for cancer for a Terry Fox event, rode to school with Hannah in the limo, donated by the Ocean radio station in Victoria. Hannah’s sister, Hailey, 3, also joined her.
On Wednesday, the Tour de Rock team left Duncan and conquered the Malahat, the last big hill on the 1,100-kilometre journey from the top of Vancouver Island to the bottom.
It puts us in the home stretch and many of us in our hometowns.
As we zigzagged through the Western Communities, West Shore RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Wright got a hero’s welcome at Journey Middle School in his hometown of Sooke.
Wright is unable to ride because of an injury suffered during a crash near Tofino, but he shifted the attention to longtime fundraiser Jane Beddoes, a cancer survivor and Sooke resident who has been raising money for the Tour de Rock for 17 years.
This year, she helped raise $17,000 in the community.
Beddoes was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006. She went through two bouts of chemotherapy, five surgeries, two bone-marrow transplants and a month of radiation.
She said her own battle with cancer has inspired her to support the Tour de Rock, which funds pediatric cancer research and helps send kids with cancer to Camp Goodtimes.
“They told me I have the best kind of cancer and I thought to myself, ‘If I have the best cancer, what are these kids going through who have the worst kind of cancer?’ ” Beddoes said.
“So we have to do something.”
— with files from Cindy E. Harnett
Times Colonist reporter Katie DeRosa is one of the media riders for this year’s Cops for Cancer Tour de Rock, a 13-day fundraising bike ride from Port Alice to Victoria that began on Sept. 21. For updates, photo galleries and blog posts, check timescolonist.com/tour.
To donate to her fundraising campaign in support of the Canadian Cancer Society and its efforts to help children with cancer, go to convio.cancer.ca/goto/katiederosa.
TODAY’S RIDE IN GREATER VICTORIA
Morning stops include St. Michaels University School, Oak Bay High, Claremont, Stelly’s and Parklands. The riders roll into Sidney’s Mary Winspear Centre just after 2 p.m. for a free public event. Dinner is at 7 at the Saanich Plaza Boston Pizza.
