More than 400 cricketers and celebrities gathered Saturday in Mississauga at the inaugural Cricket to Conquer Cancer event to raise funds for the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre’s research.
Canadian artist Jully Black was one of the celebrity ambassadors attending the fundraiser and said the event feels “personal” to her.
“Cancer has run through my family,” she told CBC Toronto on Saturday. “Unfortunately, I lost my mom seven years ago to pancreatic cancer.”
The Canadian Cancer Society says that two in five Canadians are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
When Black was 27 years old, she found a lump in her right breast. She said doctors at the time told her she was too young for a mammogram.
She said her doctor had to advocate for her to do all the tests, but that luckily it was just a false alarm.
“Early detection is key,” she said. “We need the research, but we also need the education and the early detection.”
Barbados-born professional cricketer Carlos Brathwaite said the fundraising event brings together two things that are close to his heart: cancer and cricket.
Brathwaite said his mother battled cancer in Barbados while he was starting his professional career overseas.
“I know how difficult it is for friends, for families who can’t be there with loved ones,” Brathwaite told CBC Toronto on Saturday.
He said he also wants to bring awareness to the importance of cancer research and how that helped his mother beat cancer.
“When she told me she had cancer, I thought it was a death sentence. And really and truly, because of the research, that means that cancer is not a death sentence,” Brathwaite said.
“Although she hasn’t been treated here, there’s a lot of research that has been done by Princess Margaret and that’s been disseminated to many other hospitals and cancer centres around the world.”
Brathwaite said he flew in from Barbados to be one of the event’s celebrity ambassadors, alongside Black. Other celebrity ambassadors included Canadian former professional basketball player Jamaal Magloire and Canadian former professional soccer player Dwayne De Rosario.
The top fundraising teams had the opportunity to draft the celebrity players onto their teams through a celebrity draft on Friday.
The president and CEO of the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation said it feels inspiring to launch an inaugural cricket event for the hospital.
“Cricket is Canada’s fastest growing sport,” Miyo Yamashita told CBC Toronto on Saturday.
“It’s also a sport that is followed hugely by a growing number of Canadians, particularly the Southeast Asian community and the Caribbean community, and those communities have quite unique cancer needs,” she said.
Yamashita said Southeast Asian Canadians tend to have higher incidences of certain types of cancers, like oral cancers, esophageal cancers, and head and neck cancers.
Caribbean men have a higher incidence of prostate cancer and are more likely to die from it, she said.
One of Toronto’s major hospital networks has announced they will be expanding their services in a newly purchased 15-storey building. The new facility will help support cancer care programs, research and education. CBC’s Lane Harrison has the details.
Yamashita said all the proceeds raised from Saturday’s event will go to the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation and will support three areas: cancer early detection, innovative treatments, and comprehensive cancer support, which includes support for caregivers and mental health support.
“We think those areas together can really help create a world free from the fear of cancer,” she said.
She said the goal for the event was to raise $500,000, but as of Saturday evening, it had already passed a million dollars.