Bruce Johnson of Toronto is close to raising $1-million for Sick Kids and other children’s hospitals from a series of long motorcycle rides through multiple countries since 2013.Handout
The organizers: Bruce, Holly, Jocelyn and Mary Johnson
The pitch: Raising $1-million
The cause: Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and other children’s hospitals
As Bruce and Mary Johnson held their newborn daughter, they knew she didn’t have long to live.
Alyssa Rae was born with omphalocele, a rare birth defect that occurs when bowel, liver and other organs remain outside the body in a sac. She lived for just 20 days and died on Nov. 17, 1998, at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
“That’s a nuclear bomb in your life,” recalled Mr. Johnson, a real estate agent in Wasaga Beach, Ont. “We promised her we would never forget her.”
The couple had two more children – Holly and Jocelyn – and both have grown up knowing about their older sister through photographs and other keepsakes.
When Holly was 10 years old she asked her father about going on a long motorcycle trip. They planned a journey to Costa Rica in 2013 and Mr. Johnson decided to turn it into a fundraising trip for Sick Kids. They collected nearly $60,000, more than twice what they expected.
That was just the start. In 2016, Mr. Johnson and his daughter completed a ride across Canada and in 2018 they spent six months travelling from the Canadian Arctic to the bottom of Argentina. By the time they finished they had raised $750,000 in total for Sick Kids and the Children’s Miracle Network, a group of more than 100 hospitals.
The pandemic curtailed further trips until this summer. Mr. Johnson had planned a global ride that would have gone through Russia. He had to scale it back because of the war in Ukraine and instead headed to Labrador and Atlantic Canada, to raise money and visit hospitals. Holly couldn’t accompany him because of studies and a summer job.
He’s hoping that when he makes it home in a couple of weeks he’ll have raised $250,000 to bring the total to $1-million for all the rides.
Mr. Johnson isn’t sure about future trips but he said the trips have been rewarding on many levels. “It really is remarkable how many good people are out there,” he said during a recent stop. “It’s been a wonderful journey.”
Paul Waldie