Cancer has hit Darla Laframboise and her core group of friends hard recently.
In January of this year, one of her besties, Tammie Putinski-Zandbelt, died after a lung cancer diagnosis. Laframboise herself was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in March 2021, but is in remission after receiving treatment at the Northeast Cancer Centre.
So Laframboise and her pals, along with family members, got together and attended Sudbury’s Relay for Life in support of the Canadian Cancer Society June 11.
“We're here for a whole bunch of reasons, but mainly for Tammie, and actually also to celebrate the fact that I'm in remission, and things are going good,” Laframboise said.
Laframboise said raising money for cancer research is important to her, especially given the chemotherapy drug she is taking as part of her treatment didn’t exist until recently.
“It's a new drug that's out there, and I'm thankfully covered for it,” she said.
“It's allowing the cancer cells to kind of get pushed down and stopped, hopefully, from coming back. And it's all because of research, right? And the research needs funding.”
“Darla’s Duchesses” were easy to spot on Laurentian University’s track, where the event was held, because they were dressed something like Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, tiaras and all.
Halloween being Laframboise’s favourite time of year, she thought it would be fun to have her team dress up for the occasion.
“I bought a dress, and then they started buying dresses, and then I bought the sash, and then I found a tiara as well,” she said. “You’ve got to have a tiara.”
Sudbury’s Relay for Life was held in-person Saturday for the first time since 2019 after two years of virtual versions of the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Co-directors Sonia Del Missier and Tim Whalen said around 120 people signed up for the event this year, and they were hoping to raise up to $30,000.
While several participants noted to Sudbury.com that this year’s Relay for Life was more sparsely attended than past events, the organizers said it was great to be able to get people back together.
“Being able to revisit a formula that I think everybody has worked so hard to make successful was really, really important,” said Whalen.
Signature events at Relay for Life include the survivor's lap around the track (now renamed the Lap of Hope to be more inclusive of every stage of people’s cancer journey), as well as the luminary ceremony.
“It's dark, and you have all those candles lit, and the pipers playing Amazing Grace,” said Del Messier. “The luminaries are either in memory or in honour of a loved one or a friend that has gone through their journey with cancer, whether they survived the journey or didn't.”
Pina Cotesta, whose teenage daughter, Laura, passed from cancer in 1997, is a long-time participant in Relay for Life.
The Relay for Life team in memory of Laura, called the Love and Friendship Team, has raised nearly $200,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society over the past 20 years.
Lockerby Composite School’s Kids Caring for Kids Cancer Drive in memory of Laura Cotesta has also raised nearly $1 million for the Northeast Cancer Centre.
Cotesta noted that over the past year, the Canadian Cancer Society provided funding to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto to research the type of tumour that Laura died from.
“That was very inspiring to me, and that's why I'm continuing, and that's why I'm here,” she said.
