What if you could help cure cancer?
Billions are raised to fund cancer research and there are so many cancer fundraisers. But what if you could help accelerate the end to cancer by backing one person, one research project that has great potential to cure the disease? And what if you could meet her and listen to her and find out what she is doing and then what if you could get updates on how each dollar you donated or raised helped to solve our world’s growing cancer problem? What if you could hear directly from the cancer researchers, the doctors and scientists you were funding? Would you donate?
Back in America in the 1880s, the risk of cancer was a mere 1 out of 188 people. Now 1 in 2 men will get cancer and 1 in 3 women and it isn’t slowing down. Cancer is the #1 cause of death in Canada. Likely,someone you love has succumbed to this deadly disease which respects no age, no race or border. This means that you have at least a 33% to 50% chance of getting cancer. By helping to fund a cure for cancer, you could decrease your risk to near zero. And by doing so, you can and could have helped stop your loved ones from getting or dying from cancer. Yes it is grim but it is serious and there is hope.
We know a doctor, oncologist, mother and cancer widow, who has figured out how the first cancer cell develops and is now trying to figure out how to develop an antibody to detect this first cancer cell and take it out in a non-toxic way. This means that cancer will be detected super early, which means that it can be easily treated and cured. Most people die of cancer because it has already spread, because it was detected too late.
Cancer is a true pandemic we must solve together. The current solutions have hardly made a dent, many of them trying hard to prolong life, but failing to do so with significant cost, ghastly side effects and not much success for most cancer victims.
Lots of money raised, billions and billions each year spent to find a cure, but little progress. This is an opportunity akin to funding Edison, the Wright brothers, or Jonas Salk, the man who eradicated polio. Efforts like these are what we believe money should seek and go to support.
Peer to peer fundraising allows more people to participate in empowering and funding truly innovative scientists on the cusp of their breakthrough discovery.
Not only will you help accelerate breakthrough research, but you might also help your loved ones, your neighbours, members of your community, avoid succumbing to this brutal killer.
If not, we will continue to let cancer run wild on its killing spree. And odds are that it will eventually impact you directly, if it hasn’t already. Just Ride!
Just Ride!
In 2008, my friend, Elliott Koo, just 28 years old, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he was told that he wouldn’t live more than three months.
It was then that I decided to do something for him, to inspire him to fight and live longer. I decided to ride in a charity ride for cancer and I only had 3 weeks to train. Most people spend a year training. I was going to ride from Vancouver to Seattle, 200 km over two days. I hadn’t ridden a bike in 20 years. I could barely walk after the first day and could not walk at all after the ride. But it was worth it. I raised close to $20,000 for Elliott and for the BC Cancer Agency.
Riding to raise funds for cancer research by peers gathers the heart of the community, and this energy is inspiring. I am inspired by what the U.S achieved when Kennedy proposed that they commit themselves to send a man to the moon within the decade. The heart of a nation was inspired and that fuelled innovation. We must spark the heart of the world to be bold, take risks, innovate and find solutions to our most pressing challenges. I completed that cancer fundraiser ride every year from 2008 to 2019. I formed a company bike team to ride with me and we went from city to city across Canada each year. After Vancouver was Calgary, then Toronto, then Montreal, finishing in Halifax before the Covid-19 pandemic. We raised over $100,000 for cancer care and research.
When Covid hit in 2020, the charity rides were cancelled. But last year in 2022, when the world started to open up again, we decided to organize a small charity ride of our own. We wanted to do it our way and support a handful of cancer researchers who we believed had the most potential to cure this disease once and for all.
The First Cell
It’s not that cancer researchers are lazy or frivolous. Nobody wants to spend all that money and not cure the disease. I believe that it is the paradigm and beliefs held around cancer that cause us to bark up the wrong tree. Many people believed that when the human DNA genome was unravelled, that it meant the end of cancer. Most people believe that cancer arises from genetic mutations. Yes some do, but that is a mere 5% as the originating cause. 95% of cancers have hundreds of genetic mutations and there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to these mutations.
Dr. Azra Raza is a respected oncologist,researcher and trailblazer at Columbia University in New York. Her husband was also an oncologist. One day he was diagnosed with lymphoma and she went from being an oncologist married to an oncologist to a wife of a dying husband. Her inspiring heartfelt story can be read through tears in her book, The First Cell.
My mother passed away suddenly from gallbladder cancer in 2006, just months before my daughter was born. Grief made better but I miss my mother so much. I am ever increasingly surrounded by many who have or are succumbing to this disease.
When I was 14, I was hospitalised. One afternoon I was ice skating at Riley Park and by dinner, I couldn’t move or walk. As I lay in the hospital bed, I thought in my heart, that if I lived I would become a medical doctor. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Henoch Schonlein Purpura, an inflammation of small blood vessels that affects joints, the kidney and skin.
A few weeks later, I was walking again and so my life dream was alive. I became a medical doctor but it turns out that I had another calling as well, to be an entrepreneur.
These two threads of my life, have formed the foundation of my life and one big dream to help find the cure for cancer, for heart disease and for autoimmune diseases, like mine..
This year, as I spoke with a colleague, Carly Janes, she asked me if we should plan another charity ride. I had been telling her and others my dream was to cure cancer by doing charity rides with pro-cyclists, auctioning off amazing art (an amazing cancer story to tell another time) and help educate the public about preventing cancer.
Carly had this incredible but simple insight. The charity rides aren’t actually about the rides themselves but about the dire need to find and fund a cure so why not focus on what really matters. Select the top researchers and scientists who we believe have the greatest potential to cure the disease and raise money for them and enlighten the public at the same time. I thought it was brilliant.
The Dream To Cure
So we named our charity ride The Dream to Cure. We’d start with the #1 disease in Canada: cancer. And once we’d cured that, we’d move on to the next one. We’d ride, hit hard hill climbs together with each pedal, each breath, each moment of suffering making us stronger in mind and body. Then, we’d gather to eat organic healthy food (not just bars and gels) and hear directly from the researchers and doctors themselves in an inspiring and educational way that not only helps them be empowered to breakthrough but to inspire each listener, each rider, each sponsor, to do more, to live more, to be generous with both their time, their gifts, their money and their lives. For we are truly blessed to be granted this gift of life. Each moment, each breath, each day that with each other.
We’d start small and grow healthily.
Shattered Dreams
We wanted to do this ride in a beautiful place where Elliott lived his last two years, passing away at the young ripe age of just 30 years old. As I write this, I remember the amazing last two years he lived. How he lived such an inspiring life, helping others. I remember him telling my young son, Joshua, who was just four years old, to listen to his dad and to eat healthy, to not eat chips and junk food like he had, not to smoke like he had. I remember how he moved his caregivers to tears at his lively spirit, seeking to help them, when he had cancers all over his abdomen, some 10 to 15 cm in size.
I wanted to honour Elliott by starting and finishing at Camp Howdy, in Belcarra, just 40 minutes away from Downtown Vancouver.
But when we applied to Metro Parks to start our ride in Belcarra Park, they declined our special events permit. I was heart broken by that news. They didn’t want us to use this road that goes from the park to Camp Howdy. They told us that the only wayto go to Camp Howdy was by boat. I wished that we had bikes that could ride on water. Maybe one day...
So we decided to hire a boat charter but the boat ride alone is 1 hour long. Would people want to do a charity ride and then sit on a boat one hour to have lunch and listen to talks? Plus the costs of chartering the boats would add up. And so I prayed a big prayer to the Almighty Hand above:
We Dream to Cure, despite the obstacles, despite the hardships, despite whatever comes our way and we ask for your support, we ask for your heart, we ask for your prayers, as we ride around Belcarra, not only in memory of Elliott, but also all of those who have fell because of this awful disease.
And I mostly dream of helping each of you, to not only to prevent you or any loved ones from ever getting this deadly disease but to be able to detect it and remove it before it is too hard and painful to fight. In order to do that you have to know how cancer starts and how to starve it so it doesn’t grow undetected.
Walt Disney died from lung cancer at 65. Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer at 56. The list goes on and on. Too young. Too brilliant. Too precious.
Ride for Life and the Fallen
Dr. Azra Raza has devoted her life to detecting the very first cancer cell. She’s been collecting and preserving the blood of cancer victims for decades with her own money and fundraising as it costs millions of dollars to maintain these records. And now she has $14.5 million to develop a way to detect the first cancer cell.
I am honoured to dedicate this Dream to Cure ride not only to Elliot, to my mother, Kyung Sin Ham, but to Azra Raza’s husband and all of your loved ones who succumbed to cancer.
I asked my beloved friend, a true philanthropist, Sylvan Adams, my partner of pro cycling team, Israel Premier Tech, if we could have a pro cyclist ride with us, to represent the fight for life, cyclists who climb the highest and toughest mountains in Europe, the Alps, the Pyrenees. The Israel Premier Tech team has been so supportive of this worthy ride. I am so grateful.
I used to be terrified of any hills, especially on my first charity ride back in 2008. I saw a girl ride up a hill and her chain snapped. I became terrified of that hill. But I slowly got up the courage to do it .
Then one year, I decided that I was going to embrace the hills. I was going to climb and ride up these hills, to make me stronger. To used the charity rides to become really strong, physically fit, my lungs, my legs, my back, my arms. So I started to purposely ride up hills and then mountains. I found that they not only made me physically stronger, but mentally stronger.
Once, I fell and my hip was badly injured. A week later I rode up Mount Seymour, Grouse Mountain and Cypress–the Triple Crown. Stupid me, yes my hip was so swollen after that. But that was when I developed the Hill Principle. A metaphor of life for me. To always climb to the summit and prevail.
Chris Froome, the Heart of a Champion
Oh What a Dream to Ride with an Icon. Sylvan replied to my request to send our most famous rider, Chris Froome to support The Dream to Cure! I could hardly believe it. I had come to really admire Chris for his heart and his spirit. When he was an amateur, he had no big mountains to climb in South Africa, so he pressed his brakes while riding to mimic riding up a mountain. I tried that but I couldn’t do it for very long. It was just mentally hard to do.
Chris Froome, four time winner of the Tour de France. A friend. Last year, I rode with him and other pro cyclists. I could hardly believe that I was riding with them. But keeping the Hill Principle in mind over the past 15 years, made it possible.Encore!
So I ask you to ride and raise funds for Dr. Azra Raza to detect and take out the first cancer cell for all of us.
I dream for you to know how to prevent and reduce your chances of cancer.
So we’ll focus more on the post ride event, which we are calling Encore!So the rides will be shorter, around 30 km for those who haven’t ridden in a while and 80km with some hills for those of you amazing cyclists.
I hope you will ride,take the boat with me to Camp Howdy, pay tribute to Elliott and all those fallen as well as listen and learn about the incredible work and life experience of Azra on the frontlines of cancer and to hear her spirit, her life energy, to find a cure.
Our mottos are:
Anything is Possible!
We Ride for Life!
Only 100 Riders
Because of the boat rides, we only have room for 100 riders. 100 riders to ride with Chris Froome. What a dream. 100 listeners to hear Dr. Azra Raza. What a chance of a lifetime. But only 100 riders.
Register now before all the spots are filled.
And to hear Dr. Azra Raza will be something out of this world.
If you haven’t ridden a bike in years, like I hadn’t in 2008, just decide to and start. Start with the shorter ride this year and next year do the longer ride. If you are too scared to, then support one of our 100 riders. No amount is too small. And if you know some billionaires, ask them to ride or sponsor a rider.
I Dream
I dream that Metro Parks will one day allow us to ride from and into Camp Howdy. That is one of my life dreams. Elliott would be so proud. It’s worth fighting for in his honour and memory. I have many dreams but this is a big one.
Dream with me and ride with the heart of a champion. Embrace the hills, September 23rd, in Belcarra.
I believe the 100 spots will fill up quickly once the word gets out. While I love to ride with those I am used to riding with, I would love to ride for life, together with you on this amazing planet we are so blessed to live on each day.
The top fundraisers will dine with Chris and Azra. You will inspire each other and your life will be forever changed.
Then, if you are still hungry for more, Join Azra and more inspiring sages like her the next day at Camp Howdy for Veritas: A Health & Wealth Summit.
Sign up to ride Dream to CureAnd join Azra and more and more inspiring sages like her the next day at
Veritas: A Health & Wealth Summit
I invite you to join me and my special guests the next day after the ride, another Encore event we call Veritas, A Health & Wealth Summit that will change the way you think about health and wealth with simple yet life-changing principles.
These principles helped me build a tremendous blessed life, breakthrough ideas for my businesses, for my dreams, and for those around me.
Join Azra and Chris Froome and other modern-day sages at our all day event on September 24, 2023 at Camp Howdy.
This event is exclusive and I invite you because you have had the great fortune to be connected through this dream. We wish to not only share their stories, their wisdom, their life principles on health and wealth, but also enjoy the fantastic serene venue and amazing healthy delicious food.
Just another dream becoming reality–to walk with,hear from and live among wise sages of our time. So that we too can be wise. With much gratitude and love,
Dr. Kevin Ham
RSVP to Veritas