WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm Riley,

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I am an anesthesiologist from Vancouver,

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and last summer I ran across Canada.

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My story begins in 2007

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when my dad was diagnosed
with prostate cancer.

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He had surgery to remove 
his prostate in the spring of 2008.

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Shortly after that, my grandfather 
died of prostate cancer,

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and within about six months,

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two of my really close friends
were diagnosed with prostate cancer.

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18 months after that,
my dad's prostate cancer came back.

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So over the course of two,
two and a half years,

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prostate cancer was this thing
that sort of thrust itself into my life,

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and became a big part of it.

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It wasn't something that I was expecting,

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it wasn't something
that I know I heard a lot about,

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and it was something that I felt like,

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I wanted to do something against,

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and to raise awareness for.

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Prostate cancer doesn't just affect
my family, as you heard,

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it is quite a common cancer;

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it's actually one in six men
[who] will get prostate cancer.

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That's more common than breast cancer.

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Those people who do get it,

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--if I look around the room here,
and say there's 300 people in the room--

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If a 150 of you are men,

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25 of you will get prostate cancer.

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Of those 25, four of you will die from it.

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Those of you who don't,
don't escape completely,

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the surgery and treatment
for prostate cancer

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can have devastating complications

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like impotence, 
incontinence, and depression.

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That obviously
doesn't just affect the men,

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all the women in the audience,
have fathers and brothers, sons,

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and it's really a whole family issue.

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I decided that I wanted to do something,

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and running across Canada

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was the biggest thing
that I could think of to do,

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that would raise
the most amount of awareness.

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In May of 2011, I set off
from the small little island you can see

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on the far right-hand side
of the map there;

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that's a place called
Cape Spear, Newfoundland,

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it's the most easterly part
of North America.

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I ran 70 kilometers a day over the course
of five months to get to Vancouver.

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To put that into European perspective,

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that's like running from London to Moscow,

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and then turning around and running back,

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(Laughter)

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and then turning north and running
600 kilometers up to Edinburgh.

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It was quite a distance,

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but just running wasn't going do it,

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I needed a way to let people know
what I was doing.

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I came up with a charity
and we would call it "Step into Action,"

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because we're trying to get men
to step into action and go get tested.

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We had the money

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linked to a Vancouver-based
Prostate Cancer Research Centre,

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which was one of the foremost

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prostate cancer research centres
in the world,

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but even that wasn't enough
to let people know what we were doing.

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We felt like we needed a cool slogan,

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because everybody needs a cool slogan.

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One of the difficulties
with prostate cancer is

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if you want to get a man
to go see his GP

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when he's healthy and has 
no symptoms, is pretty hard.

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If you try to get him to go see his GP,

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and tell him he is going to get
a prostate exam,

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(Laughter)

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it's even harder.

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What we tried to do is use
that idea, and we said, literally:

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"One finger can save your life."

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(Laughter)

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And so, I spent last summer giving
prostate cancer the finger.

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(Laughter)

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We came up with all the promotional
material we could think of,

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we put out information cards,

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we came up with prostate cancer ties,
and pins, and wristbands.

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We sent out name badges and buttons,

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and we went on every radio, 
newspaper, and television show

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that would have us
and that we could find.

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And we did everything 
that we could to raise awareness.

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And what started as this campaign
to raise awareness for prostate cancer,

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ended up being
the biggest adventure of my life.

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When I started off,
I didn't really know what to expect,

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but as it started to build,
it became quite awesome.

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I got to meet thousands
of prostate cancer survivors,

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which was great for my own psyche.

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I got to take part...

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I'm a big sports fan, and I got 
to do the halftime shows

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at some football games,
and my local ice hockey game,

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and we were able to reach hundreds
of thousands of men through that media.

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As the momentum built and we got closer
to Vancouver, which is where I'm from,

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I had police and fire truck escorts,
which I thought it was awesome.

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(Laughter)

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As I ran into Vancouver, they actually
relit the Olympic Cauldron for us,

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and I finished my run
by jumping into the Pacific Ocean,

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and I had 1,200 kids
from my old school there with me.

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It was absolutely awesome.

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But, by no means, was it just,
you know, fun and easy.

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It was a bit grueling, it was monotonous;

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running seven to eight hours a day

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can get you through
your iTunes library fairly quickly.

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(Laughter)

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It had things that I like to call
the five H's, where the first was 'hills,'

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there's a lot of them in Canada.

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Don't know if you guys
heard of the Rocky Mountains.

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(Laughter)

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There's the 'heat' and 'humidity.'

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It was 44 degrees Celsius
and 80 to 90% humidity,

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I was wringing my shirt and my shorts out
every two or three kilometers.

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The 'headwind' was immense,

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I was going east to west,
so I had one everyday,

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and sometimes
I had to sneak in behind my RV,

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so that I could keep moving forward.

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And then there was the 'hunger,'
and I was hungry all the time.

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(Laughter)

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But the worst part by far,
were the blisters.

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I didn't have a lot of time to train,
--I live in Winnipeg at the moment,

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it's -40°C in the winter
when I was trying to train

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it's not the most conducive to running--
and when I started off, my feet felt it.

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I had blisters everyday
until I got to Calgary,

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which is about 5,000 kilometers away,

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and this photo is taken 
from a hospital, two weeks into the run,

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where I ended up 
having to sort of take a little break,

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while I got attended to.

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People love to talk
and ask me about statistics,

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so I've put in some here for you.

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I ran 6,621 kilometers
and went through eight pairs of shoes.

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I actually lost 46 pounds,

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despite the fact that I was eating
even when I was running.

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We raised close to 600,000 dollars
and we're still climbing.

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I ran, towards the end, 70 kilometers
a day and maxed that around 80.

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With running five-and-half
to six-and-half min/km,

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that took seven to eight hours a day
to get through what I was doing.

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I learned a lot during this trip.

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[One] of the lessons I learned

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was the power of being
completely unreasonable.

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I had this idea to run across Canada,
and a lot of people told me that it was...

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"You'll take too long and [it'll] be
too complicated logistically."

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One of my favorite quotes
is from Mark Twain,

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and I'm paraphrasing
when I say that he said:

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"The reasonable man
adapts himself to the world around him.

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The unreasonable man tries to adapt
the world around him to himself,

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that's why most progress
is made by unreasonable men."

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The next thing I learned
was the power to inspire.

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If you have a great idea,
people get excited about it,

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and if you can get people
excited about your cause,

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then you can get them
to become partners in your cause,

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and that helps you build
support and momentum.

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I tried to build a team around me
that was excited about what I was doing,

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and from there we were able
to build sponsors and get momentum

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and that's when our campaign
really started to kick-off.

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The next thing I learned
was the power of creating a diverse team.

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I spent eight hours a day running, I spent
the rest of the time eating or sleeping.

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I didn't have a lot of time to be doing

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a lot of the promotions
that I wanted to be doing.

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But I had a campaign manager who was great
at coming up with things like,

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"One finger can save your life,"

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I had a road manager who was relentless
at keeping our morale up,

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and would hand me sandwiches and say:

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--even though they were
the same sandwiches everyday--

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"Today guess what? The lettuce
is next to the tomato."

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(Laughter)

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"Yesterday it was next to the cheese."

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And I had a family that was fantastic
at helping, get support,

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get sponsors, and create events.

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The last thing I learned
was the power of making it personal.

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I could have gone door-to-door and said:
"I'm here, running about prostate cancer,

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and I want you to go to your GP,
and have a prostate exam."

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And that would work to a certain extent,

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but would also be
a little bit more difficult.

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I tried to make it about my grandfather,
my father, myself,

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and then I tried to make it about
your grandfather, father, and yourself,

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or the man in your life.

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And I found that to be
a lot more successful.

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So when I started this, I had a big dream
that I was going to do this

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and try to figure out the ways to raise
the most amount of awareness.

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I had to take that dream off the shelf
and start working at it bit by bit,

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but it ended up being
a fantastic experience.

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Like I said, one in six men
get prostate cancer,

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but for my dad it was one in six,
my grandfather is one in six,

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and is a very good possibility

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that both my brother and myself
could be one in six.

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So thank you.

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(Applause)