Bev Moir, 72, in her Toronto home on Dec. 3.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
The organizer: Bev Moir
The pitch: Raising $500,000 and climbing
The cause: Cancer research at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital
Bev Moir has never smoked and led a healthy lifestyle. So when doctors told her four years ago that she had Stage 4 lung cancer and only months to live, Ms. Moir was stunned.
“It was a gut punch. There’s no doubt about it,” Ms. Moir, 72, recalled from her home in Toronto. “It just came out of the blue.”
Her oncologist at Sunnybrook Hospital said her cancer was likely the result of a genetic defect. “The symptoms are very, very subtle, so you don’t notice them,” she said. The only indication that something was wrong came when she had two colds within a few months and couldn’t shake a persistent cough. An assortment of tests revealed a tumour near her heart. “I was given a life expectancy of six months to three years,” she said.
Fortunately Ms. Moir had a relatively common genetic mutation and her cancer has been treatable with medication. Most of her cancer cells have either disappeared or shrunk in size. But she knows that at some point the dormant cells will become resistant to the medicine. “I’m feeling pretty good,” she said. “I’m happy and you know I could get 10 years.”
Shortly after her diagnosis, Ms. Moir retired from her job as a wealth manager at the Bank of Nova Scotia to be with her family. She also wanted to do something to support lung-cancer research and to reduce the stigma surrounding the disease. “Smoking has meant that lung cancer has a lower profile and is under researched,” she said.
With the help of her golfing buddies, Ms. Moir launched the annual Crush it with Bev golf tournament in 2021. The event has raised close to $500,000 in total so far and Ms. Moir plans to keep it going until she raises $1-million. Proceeds fund lung-cancer research and treatment at Sunnybrook and some of the money has already helped the hospital buy cutting-edge equipment to test tissue samples.
“I just feel incredibly proud. It has emboldened me,” she said of the tournament’s success. “I still have a death sentence hanging over my head. But we all do. We’re all going to die some time. So I’ve come to terms with that.”