Ten year old Miriam said she is going to be excited to walk past the mural every day on the way to school knowing she helped work on it. (Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7FM)

Cyclists on a mission to raise money for children’s health care, rode to Nanaimo’s hospital on Friday morning.

The cyclists are a part of Canada Cycles for Kids, an organization that travels around the country on cycling tours raising money for children. They are taking on a six-day cycling tour across Vancouver Island, in support of health services in the region.

After completing 20 different tours throughout Canada, the group of around 20 cyclists kicked off their Vancouver Island tour at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH) on Friday, July 17.

The stop comes as the cycling group partnered up with the Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation to donate over $50,000 for new equipment for the Perinatal Unit at NRGH. The foundation raises funds for improving health services in the central Vancouver Island area.

As crowds cheered, around 20 cyclists with Canada Cycles for Kids made their way to the main entrance of the hospital.

Co-founders of Canada Cycles for Kids, Rob Fetherstonhaugh and Marc Balevi spoke to the media after their arrival.

This is the first time the group has ridden on Vancouver Island, first stopping in Nanaimo, then riding to Port Alberni, Tofino, Saanich, and finally Victoria.

Fetherstonhaugh said after 25 years of riding elsewhere in Canada, they knew they had to come to Vancouver Island.

“It's one of the things we wanted to do. We’re all across Canada. We believe in from sea to sea to sea. So we've done Newfoundland,” Fetherstonhaugh said. “We're giving money this year to Nunavut and Rankin Inlet. The next logical choice is British Columbia, and Vancouver Island is beautiful.”

Balevi said they connect with hospitals all around the country, because they know all hospitals are struggling with funding.

“All hospitals need more money than they have anyway. It’s more the intensity in which they need and why we do what we do. It's a never-ending need,” Balevi said. “It’s a balance between what you can get from the community versus what the governments are prepared to do and get. So we love supporting it for that reason. We fill in the gaps that they need so badly. That's kind of our mission.”

The group is made up of cyclists from around the world that cycle together across the country spreading their story to raise funds for the health care system. Balevi said they see money donated from around the world.

According to Canada Cycles for Kids, in the past 25 years the group has cycled more than 26,000 kilometers and has raised over $4 million dollars for hospitals and children’s services across the country.

“We try to make a difference. We try to find things that'll make a difference in the local community, and we've found pretty good at that so far. So quite enjoy that,” Fetherstonhaugh said

“I call it being useful. You want to be useful. I think everyone's goal is to be useful in some way, and that's the way we are, ” Balevi said.

Barney Ellis-Perry, CEO of the Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation, was there to greet and cheer on the cyclists when they arrived. He first learned about Canada Cycles for Kids when he got a phone call from one of the organizers.

“They called us. They decided they're going to come to Vancouver Island for the first time. They've been in almost every province and territory of Canada, and they decide to come to Vancouver Island,” Ellis-Perry said. “They focus on healthcare so they called the Victoria Hospital Foundation, and they said, ‘Why don't you call Nanaimo if that's where you're starting?’ So they called us.”

Ellis-Perry explains with the donations, the foundation will be able to purchase two new pieces of equipment for NRGH, a new fetal monitor, and an operating room cautery machine.

“These are many things that have been on the list for a long time, but there hasn't been enough funds to cover them,” he said.

He said for the last year, the foundation has been raising funds for 20 new fetal monitors to replace aging equipment and add more capacity.

Ellis-Perry said the money from Canada Cycles for Kids is enough to hit their goal and buy the final monitor.

“We've had a campaign for over a year to raise the money for those, and now that this is the last one, that's the last piece of the puzzle,” he said.

Trina Knight is the manager of child, youth and family acute care at the Nanaimo hospital. She explains what the monitors are for, and why they were needed from the hospital foundation.

“We’ve asked for some fetal monitors, which are monitors that we assess pregnant mums and babies with while they're in labour,” Knight said. “These are very expensive pieces of equipment.”

She said the current monitors are about 17 years old.

“So they're all at end of life, usually around 10 or 15 years,” she said. “So we're kind of limping them along, and these new monitors will be super useful and helpful in our work.”

Knight said the cautery machine is for women going through a caesarean section, or C-section and is used during surgery to stop bleeding in the patient. Currently the Perinatal Unit doesn’t have a cautery machine and needs to borrow one from other units in the hospital.

“We are borrowing this equipment from the main OR,” she said. “We're really hoping to get a piece of equipment for the Perinatal specific OR that we have on the unit.”

Along with supporting the Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation, Canada Cycles for Kids’ 6-day Vancouver Island tour is also supporting the Vancouver Island Make a Wish and the Victoria General Hospital Foundation. More information about their work can be found at www.canadacyclesforkids.com.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

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