Irishman completes cross-Canada charity bike ride
Published: June 25, 2007
Wind, rain, and no one to keep you company but the cows.
That’s what made the Prairies the toughest part of cycling from Vancouver to Halifax, said Irishman Tony Griffin yesterday as he completed the last leg of his cross-Canadian journey.
Today, he’s off to Ireland, where he will soon complete a cross-Ireland trip.
The entire bike ride is meant as a cancer fundraiser that’s aiming to raise $1.5 million.
In an interview yesterday after his raucous welcome to the Halifax waterfront, Griffin, whose own father died of cancer, was asked what helped him get through a gruelling journey.
“My memories of my own dad, and the reason this entire journey started - of him going from a very fit man to one who had to be helped to eat,” he said.
“I was saying, look, I’m suffering a little bit in the Prairies, but this is nothing in comparison to what I saw my father go through, or the many people who are watching this who are living with cancer or with a family member with cancer.
“It’s a great thing to be alive and to feel that pain.
“The other challenging part were the fundraisers. You might come off doing 150 kilometres a day and not really feeling Mae West, and you need to go off to a fundraiser. But I shortly found out that was the fantastic part, meeting these people.”
Griffin, who is renowned in the Irish sport of hurling, left Vancouver May 2, averaging 150 km per day.
Flan Garvey, mayor of Ennis, Griffin’s Irish hometown, was at the Halifax welcome.
“Being a young man of enthusiasm and ideas, he decided he would do this trip for cancer research,” Garvey said.
The cross-Canada journey was followed closely in Ireland, said Garvey, who read weekly updates in the local paper.
“We followed him closely the whole time,” Garvey said.
Yesterday, Griffin was introduced to 10-year-old Emma Larade, who will soon find out if her brain tumour is in remission.
“This is overwhelming,” said her mother Reta, a Mabou resident who came down to see Griffin cross the finish line.
“This is very, very inspirational,” she said.
“That, to me, is success,” Griffin later said.
“If she is inspired by us, if you don’t raise one more penny, we’ve done our job.”
They have raised $600,000 to date.
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