The ALS community invites everyone to Fort George Park on Sunday to take on a muscle-killing disease.
Wendy Toyer, executive director of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Society of B.C. will be here to join local supporters, advocates and loved ones in the battle against this fatal affliction.
"I'll be in your fair city on Sunday, and I've been there most years. I wasn't there last year, but I try to be there when I can," she told The Citizen.
Toyer was absent last year in order to attend the Kamloops ALS Walk on the same day, and that event centred on a celebrity sufferer. Clayton Smailes passed away from the disease but as a news videographer with Kamloops media, he and friends were able to document his stages with the disease, from first diagnosis after some curious physical quirks to eventually passing away from total progressive lockdown of the body - although the mind stays as sharp as ever.
Smailes, Toyer reminded the public, was a child of Prince George.
"He and his wife Colleen are very special to the ALS Society, because of the impact they have had on people, their ability to be strong and to educate," said Toyer said. "The documentary talks about him being in the 4-H club up there in your area when he was young, so his connections go Prince George as well. You meet the most amazing, inspirational people but then sadly you lose them."
The ALS reality when Smailes died in 2009 was almost as bleak as when it first became famous under the name Lou Gehrig's Disease. Many associate the disease with this baseball legend because it struck him down in the prime of his professional baseball career, going from an ironman in 1939 when he was diagnosed, until the disease took his life two years later.
But the science has been accelerating in recent years. Smailes was a part of some of that pioneering, especially in the use of gaze-tracking computer systems that allowed him to type with the movements of his eyes.
"We are so optimistic that the Canadian ALS Research Association's work will lead to a cure," Toyer said. "I believe with all my heart, within five years we will have an affective treatment or a cure. This is only made possible by people supporting the walks for ALS, they are the cornerstone of what we do."
Her optimism is not rooted in mere hope. A groundbreaking drug has been approved for testing in Canada, allowing 800 ALS recent exhibitors to join an international analysis period for this potential treatment.
To support the ALS efforts, come to Fort George Park on Sunday for 11:30 a.m. registration and 1:30 p.m. departure.
