I returned home in June 2021 from Toronto where I received a single left lung transplant. I was in Toronto from September 24th, 2020, through June 9th, 2021.
I bought an e-bike and rode various trails in Nova Scotia to raise funds for Canadian Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation thru their Hope Breathes Here program. My most enjoyable day was doing the Celtic Trail, Troy Station to Inverness Beach in early October. The weather was remarkable, and I was Joined by Carolyn Marsh from Cape Breton and Jim Marsh followed us and brought us lunch at Mabou and at the end of the ride transported us and our bikes back to Troy Station.
My e-bike, the big Magenta machine is a Trek, Verve + 2 Low Step which I bought at Cycle Smith and have serviced there.
On June 9th I will travel to Charlottetown, PEI and do some press interviews and on June 10th there will be a major press conference at Ghiz Park. I will then start an 11 day, seven-hundred-kilometer ride clockwise around the Island via The Island Walk Trail route. I have a wonderful support team on the Island including John Robinson, Marlene Bryenton, Bryson Guptil and Rosemary Arsenault.
The ride is titled “I Ride for You and Me” and is a lead in to the 2022 Hope Breaths Here campaign. I am doing this for several reasons. We desperately need to create, more public awareness of this Rare Disease, Pulmonary Fibrosis which is terminal without a transplant. We need to ask all provinces to quickly pass Implied Consent legislation as there is a severe shortage of lungs and all other organs. We need to raise funds for research.
I am dedicating this ride to the memory of Barbara Ann Barr Haylock who passed away in February 2022, three years, five months post-transplant. Barbara was a strong patient advocate and educator who started many support groups and worked on the Board of CPFF. I also want to remember the ten members of the Halifax Pulmonary Fibrosis Support Group who passed away from October 2016 to date. I started this group in October 2016 when I was first diagnosed, and I am the third family member to have had the disease.
There will be a special donation page set up by May 14th by CPFF and 100 % of donations go to CPFF. I will have a blog page up by the third week of May and I will post daily and will be recording my ride via Go Pro Camera. I self-funding my ride. I am asking all of you to recruit an individual donor or corporate donor to pledge $700.00 or a dollar per kilometer and I need 2,000 pledges from across Canada and elsewhere to achieve the goal of $1,400,000.00. CPFF needs the funds for research. I will be asking the 30 plus shopping centre’s I was involved with to donate and contacting retailers I had as tenants to seek donations.
There will be more to follow but please do not brush this off. Some of you have already suffered from this disease and some of you will suffer in the future.
I do not know how many more rides like this I will be able to do.
Thank you.
John N. Dennis