While there is no shortage of special stories to be heard at the annual Relay for Life, this year there will include the one that started it all.
For the 20th anniversary of the Prince George event Relay for Life founder Dr. Gordon Klatt will join the festivities at the only 24-hour relay in Canada - his first outside of the United States.
Klatt, a practicing colorectal surgeon in Tacoma, Wash., accepted an invitation from the Northern Region office of the Canadian Cancer Society to take part in this year's event.
"We're both looking forward to being up in Prince George and meeting everybody up there for our first time seeing a relay outside of the U.S.," said Klatt, who will be joined by his wife Lou at Masich Place Stadium May 12 and 13.
"We're excited to have Dr. Klatt coming here," said Relay for Life team lead Helen Owen. "It's appropriate we're doing this on the 20th anniversary. We're thrilled he's willing to come."
As a marathon enthusiast, Klatt trained for a year before embarking on his 24-hour, 83-mile trek around the track at Tacoma's University of Puget Sound in May 1985.
Throughout the day and night, people donated $25 each to run or walk with him for 30 minutes, raising more than $27,000 for his local American Cancer Society office.
More than two decades later, billions of dollars have been raised for cancer research as the event has exploded to destinations around the world.
"It's been a phenomenal thing," said Klatt, who noted there are a couple of reasons he's still driven to do it.
"It's allowing the cancer patients, especially the survivors, the celebrate that with the community and also to remember the people who didn't survive," he said.
The involvement and enthusiasm of young people also gets him excited about the cause.
"It's these colleges that are doing it all over the country and young kids are volunteering and getting excited about raising money and fighting cancer and trying to get rid of it in their lifetime," Klatt said. "These are the sorts of things that really blow my mind."
Also blowing his mind is the reach of Relay for Life, which got its start in Prince George in 1993 as the Romp 'n' Stomp. More than 6,000 relays take place in more than 20 countries.
In his line of work, Klatt treats many patients with colon and rectal cancer, but he said the real drive behind his desire to support cancer research - and even to go into the field of medicine - was an early teenage experience.
"One of my classmates when I was in middle school was 14 years old and she died of leukemia. I can remember within six weeks she went from a viable young lady to dying, and that really affected me and piqued my interest in medicine and eventually in the cancer work," Klatt recalled.
Twenty-seven years ago, as Klatt completed those laps, it was the support of the nearly 300 people who came out to watch and run with him that got him through it.
"And that's the interesting thing about the relay... if you don't think you can stay up at night and go around the track, just think about what the cancer patients are going through," he said.
The 2012 Relay for Life takes place from 10 a.m. May 12 to 10 a.m. May 13. It will start with a victory lap by cancer survivors and feature a luminary ceremony at midnight to remember those who have lost their lives to cancer. It will end with a fight-back rally. To register a team, visit www.relaybc.ca.
