BREAKTHROUGH

As I approach seven years at the helm of the BC Cancer Foundation, I am as motivated as ever to put cancer, the world’s biggest healthcare challenge, front and centre.

With demand for cancer services expected to rise by 60% over the next decade as our population grows and ages, I invite you to join us in the most ambitious and comprehensive health care fundraising campaign in B.C. history, with a goal of raising $500 million to transform cancer care for all British Columbians.

We’re calling it Beyond Belief — because that’s where we’re planning to go. Beyond what anyone thought possible. And we’re doing it in honour of every person we love facing cancer, and for all those who will be affected by this devastating disease in the future.

Beyond Belief is more than just a campaign. It’s more than a call to action. It’s a chance to do our part, to take control and fuel progress in a disease that affects us all.

It’s an opportunity to support our world-class team of experts in their life-saving work — to recruit and retain the brilliant minds that BC Cancer is internationally renowned for. To power innovative research and technology and unlock the next level of life-saving impact. To grow and support the building of more cancer centres in B.C. so that people can receive care close to home, surrounded by friends and family.

The future of cancer care in B.C. is in our hands — and the time to act is now.

Sarah Roth
President & CEO
BC Cancer Foundation

Not far away is Burnaby Hospital (where Bill, his wife and children were born). It’s also the future site of BC Cancer – Burnaby, which four generations of his family have spent half a century working towards.

Bill’s grandfather, John Jambor, a Slovakian immigrant who had the foresight to acquire property on Kingsway in the 1950s (long before it was the hub of Metrotown) was the driving force behind it all.

“Work hard, live well and give back — it’s what my grandpa lived by,” says Bill. Always looking for a way to pay back his adoptive country, John first donated to BC Cancer Foundation when his wife Joan passed away from the disease in 1970. However, it was during his own treatment for jaw cancer in the early ’80s that the Jambor-McCarthy patronage became a life-long passion.

Between working for his grandfather and attending university, Bill made the trip into BC Cancer – Vancouver to visit him each day. “I remember him saying, ‘I have you, but so many of these people here have no one.’” There was only one phone that they would wheel out to patients, recalls Bill, so we quietly purchased landlines, which became lifelines, for each bed in the ward.

As an unexpected thank you, they were given a tour of the research centre by then BC Cancer president, Dr. David Boyes. “I saw then, as I see now, what is possible,” says Bill. “We have such extraordinary people at BC Cancer, we have to empower them.”

Eager to support these “brilliant minds,” John created the $1 million Jambor Knowledge Fund in the mid- ’80s to support cancer research and established a legacy bequest. After his death in 1991, Bill grew it to an astounding $21.4 million and gifted it to the Foundation in 2012.

Now, the McCarthy family, including Bill’s eldest son John, 32, (who, as the youngest board chair in BC Cancer Foundation history, is living up to his namesake) are donating $5 million to realize a longtime goal for their family — redeveloping Burnaby Hospital to include a BC Cancer centre.

“Burnaby is our home. I’m proud to live here, work here, and give back here,” says Bill. “The growth of the third largest city in B.C., with a health-care catchment of half a million people, is calling for this.”

“It’s a vision and strategy we’ve supported for decades, comprehensive cancer control with care closer to home by expanding into different regions across B.C.,” agrees John. And the timing — with Bill a former board chair of the Burnaby Hospital Foundation, at the helm of every capital campaign in the hospital’s history, and John heading up the BC Cancer Foundation Board — couldn’t be more perfect, he says.

“The two philanthropic causes for our family, going back generations, to the time of my great-grandfather, have always been BC Cancer and Burnaby Hospital. This really is a dream come true for us.”

Don’t ask Dr. Connie Eaves to prioritize the many awards she has acquired in her five decades in cancer research by naming one that means the most to her — she’ll quickly point out how impossible that is.

“It’s like asking, ‘Which of your children do you love the most?’” And, she quickly adds, “At my age to have so many awards flowing in, is actually a little embarrassing.”

But, as an Officer of the Order of Canada (2021), UBC scholar and professor and distinguished scientist at BC Cancer, she’s earned the acclaim. Few have made a bigger impact — or more discoveries — in hematopoietic, mammary and cancer stem cell biology, some of which have translated into effective cancer therapies worldwide. The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (she was inducted in 2019) said, “If leukemia and breast cancer are finally overcome, it will be due to the determined and sustained efforts of basic researchers like Dr. Eaves.”

A founding member of BC Cancer’s initial research program in 1973 and the Terry Fox Laboratory in 1981, Dr. Eaves holds five patents, has published over 500 papers and is an internationally sought speaker due to her work in normal and malignant stem cell biology of the blood and mammary gland systems.

She is also a devoted mentor, often with an onus on promoting equal training and career opportunities for women — not because she hit a glass ceiling herself, but because she saw the difficulties imposed on other young women seeking a career in science.

Wikipedia, however, wrongly states that Dr. Eaves went into research in protest of a gender bias in pre-med acceptance rates. It’s true, she says, she was one of only 10 women in her class of 100, but she decided not to carry on becoming a doctor because she fell in love with the idea of a more immediate career in genetics and cancer research.

Overall, she has already served as the scientific mother of more than 100 graduate students and postdoctoral trainees, many of whom are now in senior research leadership positions around the world or have contributed to the exciting growth of companies in the B.C. biotech space.

“My trainees are like children to me, and the turnaround time is actually much shorter (4-7 years)!” she laughs, “So now I already have great-greatgreat (scientific) grandchildren.

Much like parenting, mentoring trainees requires a lot of commitment in the beginning, says Dr. Eaves. “They come in, scientifically-speaking, like teenagers. Most of them don’t have a real clue as to what they really want to do later and suddenly they realize they are little fish in a very big pond, where it is much more competitive than they had imagined.”

And just like with teenagers, there are some growing pains. “The first few years can feel like being in a deep, dark hole with many more discouragements than discoveries. But that’s what keeps you innovative, and charged to always be on the alert for something new or unexpected.”

And BC Cancer is one of the best places to learn. “Our scientists have an amazing track record of competitive scientific output, enhanced by the adoption of a highly collaborative philosophy and, in our case, an early decision to create banks of frozen samples of patients’ cells that are still perfectly viable when they are thawed decades later.”

“But it all starts with a recognition of the fundamentals of science,” she says. “Almost every major medical advance in cancer has come out of basic research. A revolution in brain cancer might be just around the corner, but it’s much more likely to come from a new understanding of how the brain works.” Mentoring young minds continues to be one of the most fulfilling parts of her career, says Dr. Eaves. Working with trainees keeps me inspired, she says. “I’m as bad as anybody who has already achieved some advances and thinks they know best where and how to take the next step forward. Trainees bring new disruptive ideas and an infectious energy that keeps us vibrant, and on our toes, ready to take advantage of a new observation.”

Inspired by Dr. Eaves’ incredible service, the BC Cancer Foundation is proud to support the Rising Stars Awards to help advance the next generation of women and BIPOC leaders in science.

When Darcy and Manjit Johal’s 10-year-old granddaughter Mikaela was assigned a school project to do a speech on someone she admired she immediately chose her “Babaji,” her great-grandfather, Asa Johal. The family patriarch (Darcy’s father) passed away in 2021, leaving a giant void in the Johal family and the Indo-Canadian community.

Mikaela proudly told her class of Asa’s early struggles. He came to Vancouver from India as a toddler in 1924, the Depression decimated his family financially, and forced him to quit school at 14 to work in a sawmill.

By the time he died, just shy of his 99th birthday, he had grown that 25 cents-an-hour job into Terminal Forest Products (B.C.’s largest independent lumber company), received an honourary doctorate in law from UBC, was appointed to the Order of Canada and B.C. and (with his wife, Kashmir, leading the charge) donated millions to wherever it was needed most.

Asa’s endless beneficiaries included a girls’ school in his home village in Punjab, the Sikh Temple in Richmond (which he founded), local hospitals, children’s charities and the BC Cancer Foundation.

“He never said ‘no,’” says Manjit, adding, “It didn’t have to be personal to Dad — if it meant a lot to the person asking, that was reason enough to give.” (She recalls a stranger who boldly wrote asking for the down payment on a house, and the Johal family half-jokingly wondering if they should pluck the letter from the pile on his desk, just in case it moved Asa to write a cheque.)

BC Cancer sat particularly close to his heart. Asa was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, and was grateful for the care that enabled him to continue to helm the company he loved for 20 more years.

“He went back to work after a week. This guy,” says Darcy (speaking of his own more recent prostate cancer diagnosis) was in bed for two months.” Not true, scolds Manjit, “Dad was out for six weeks. We had to tie him down but …”

“He was like a general,” says Darcy. Up at 5 a.m. every day in order to drive to Washington to check on the plant there until he was 89. He didn’t officially hand over the company to Darcy until he was 96.

In addition to his success, Asa lived by the Sikh principle of sharing and giving back, says Manjit. “Even his name, ‘Asa,’ means hope, which he gave to so many people.”

He proved that through hard work, anything is possible, says Darcy, and not only would he have wholeheartedly believed in the most ambitious health care fundraising campaign in B.C. history, he would have been first in line to support it.

With six centres that span the province, BC Cancer has a definite research advantage, says Dr. Samuel Aparicio, distinguished scientist and department head of Breast and Molecular Oncology at BC Cancer.

“Our collaborative approach creates a tremendous amount of consistency in both the way that patients are treated, and also in our ability to record information about how they responded.”

And it’s not always standard practice, he says. “In other jurisdictions in the world there are six or seven different competing medical systems, none of whom share information with each other.”

Dr. Aparicio works with researchers like Dr. Taylor in Kelowna and other clinicians in Surrey, Victoria and Prince George to recruit participants for various studies, and says while the benefits aren’t always immediate for the patient, “who wouldn’t want to be treated at an institution that is forward-thinking and trying to change the practice of medicine.”

Dr. Aparicio’s incredible contributions to BC Cancer research include decoding the deadliest form of breast cancer, triple-negative subtype, and the identification of new genes that could change the way breast cancer is diagnosed, and form the basis of next-generation treatments.