09/20/2024
That’s a wrap on a very special RE/MAX Canada Activate Conference. I learned that I have hundreds of people in my life who can very effectively keep me in the dark apparently for quite a long time to achieve one of the most touching and memorable moments I will ever have.
Some background:
On November 4th, 2013, my daughter Holly and I set off into the cold from the front steps of Toronto’s SickKids Hospital on Miracle The Motorcycle. We were riding to Costa Rica to raise funds and awareness for Children's Miracle Network Canada.
Our original goal of raising $25,000 seemed a daunting task and indeed it took nearly five months and many thousands of kilometres ridden before we finally reached our goal. The money raised went toward the Alyssa Rae Johnson Endowment Fund at SickKids Foundation. Alyssa was our first child, a beautiful baby girl, and she passed away at SickKids in December 1998.
During the following decade we would do three more “Expedition Fundraisers” which kept us away from home for over a year of our lives in total while missing a Christmas and a few birthdays together as a family as Holly and I journeyed over 60,000 km together through 17 countries.
And as we rode through Arctic cold and Tropical storms and greasy mud our tribe of amazing donors grew. And then grew some more as we outran a hungry Yukon bear and lost an engine in the high Andes mountains. Adversity seemed to bring out the very best in this amazing group we came to call our Champion Agents.
In the Spring of this year the Alyssa Rae Fund was at $865,000 and I had one last trip in mind that I knew would put it over the million dollar mark: a ride around the world.
However, on April Fools Day, a pericardial effusion put me in a Collingwood Hospital where a doctor knelt at my bedside after looking at my CT scan and said these words to me: “We’ve found a spot on your lung.” And the world stopped.
It would take a few weeks before the official news came back: stage four non-operable lung cancer. There was a dragon living in my chest. And in those weeks I must have mentioned to someone that I had a regret that I might never get to see the Alyssa Rae Fund surpass the million dollar mark.
The fund had steadily moved up to nearly $900,000 since my diagnosis, buoyed by a heartfelt campaign by The Canadian Real Estate Association/L'Association, but it still sat a sizeable $100,000 shy of our dream as we arrived here at the convention.
Enter the magic of Champion Agent Sara Kalke who put together the aforementioned stealth campaign of special “11:11” white and black hats.
And enter the rest of the Champion Agents (and their friends and their family members!). They are without question the most giving philanthropists in the real estate industry and, without tipping me off, pulled the Alyssa Rae Johnson Fund across the $1 million dollar mark.
It was one of my life’s highlights for sure, to see that many people in one large room (including my parents and all of my siblings!) all sending love to the same place at the same time. We are grateful as a family to everyone who had a hand in putting that together. I’m tired as I post this and know I’m missing so many details but thank you one million times over to Christopher Alexander and Sandra Kirkland for your tremendous efforts to bring this all together and to Wendy Dempsey from our beloved SickKids Foundation family and Sherry Buenaventura Hugh from our Children's Miracle Network Canada family for all that you have done in helping make this happen.
