Nanaimo RCMP gets waxed for cancer
By Patricia Vasylchuk
Human interest
Staff at the Nanaimo RCMP detachments hold a wax-a-thon fundraising for the Canadian Cancer Society in fall 2024.
Image by Shutterstock
November 28, 2024
Content
On September 17, 2024 an initiative to raise money for pediatric cancer research and treatment left some RCMP officers in Nanaimo, British Columbia a little less hairy and a little more aerodynamic. The Nanaimo RCMP detachment hosted a wax-a-thon in support of Tour De Rock, an annual bike-a-thon for first responders organized by the Canadian Cancer Society's Cops For Cancer.
Along with a donation to the organization, staff at the Nanaimo RCMP detachment could nominate a colleague to either donate or brave the cool September air and the hot wax, which was expertly applied by a professional aesthetician. Most did both.
"This was an amazing way to support a new fundraiser idea and also raise some money for a great cause," says Constable Josh Waltman, who made a donation and offered up his arm to the sting of depilation, in the detachment parking lot. "It didn't feel good by any means, but what the kids that we're raising this money for are going through is much more than what I was subjected to."
Pedal Power
Tour de Rock is famous on Vancouver Island. For the last 27 years, approximately 50 participants, which include police officers, emergency personnel, and invited guests, spend two weeks cycling across 1,200 kilometers from one end of the Island to the other. Each rider also oversees a group of honorary riders – children who have or have beat cancer, or are a sibling of a child who's passed away. The event is the primary source of funding for Camp Goodtimes, a summer camp for children and their families affected by cancer.
"The camp has an oncology nurse and doctors and the kids can go to summer camp and still get their treatment," says Constable Shane Coubrough, a general investigator with Nanaimo RCMP who's been involved with the Tour for six years. "For a lot of these kids, that's the first experience they get outside of a hospital in years."
The camp has three different sessions: one week for children with cancer, another for just siblings of children with cancer, and a third for families. It costs approximately $1,500 to cover the costs for one child to attend Camp Goodtimes, including the cost of travel and food.
Hairy situation
"I think it's going to help put a smile on kids' faces," says Waltman, who is a mental-health liaison officer with the Nanaimo RCMP, and one of five people to get waxed at the detachment wax-a-thon, which raised $2,200.
"The prices were getting jacked up!" says Waltman. "Some guys – who took off their shirts and were super super furry – were going to get a small portion waxed, and [their colleagues] paid hundreds of dollars to ensure that they got fully waxed."
Coubrough was one of the officers who fell prey to this tactic, painfully losing half the hair from his torso to a colleague's $200 donation.
"We probably could have kept going, but we ran out of wax," says Waltman.
This fall marked the second time Nanaimo RCMP hosted a wax-a-thon, but the detachment has also raised money for the Tour through bake sales, chilli cook-offs, firework and bonfire events, and others for approximately 15 years.
Making wishes come true
Both Waltman and Coubrough are not strangers to the cancer cause.
A few years ago, Waltman partnered with the Make a Wish Foundation to fulfill a teen girl's last wish to arrive to prom in a limo and be escorted by a Mountie in Red Serge. And Coubrough has been involved with the Tour as a rider, trainer, and member of the steering committee since 2018.
Though he lost a grandfather and two friends to cancer, he says what motivates him most to participate year after year is seeing the impact the Tour has on the honorary riders and their families.
"It's an emotional support system for these kids and their families," says Coubrough, "It's often the first positive thing that they've experienced along their cancer journey."
In 2018 he witnessed first hand the impact on families when he learned that the brain cancer of one of his honorary riders had returned. Doctors gave Kaiden, age 12, four months to live. In response to the news, Coubrough and a few other officers from the Ride who had become close with the family, asked the parents how they could help fill their son's last days with as much life as possible.
"We sat down with him and his family and came up with a bucket list of things he wanted to do," says Coubrough. "We told him 'The Sky's the limit—whatever you want.'"
With the group's help, along with other generous community organizations, Kaiden spent his last days learning to fly an airplane, doing donuts in a race car, learning archery and shooting, and sleeping overnight at the Vancouver aquarium.
"It had a huge impact on the family," says Coubrough. "They felt that they weren't alone, that there were people that cared, and were going to remember Kaiden and his story."
The group was later given the honour of being Kaiden's pallbearers. Seeing the impact like this keeps Waltman and Coubrough pushing for fundraisers like the wax-a-thon.
"When the hair stopped flying we could say we sent one kid to camp," says Coubrough, "that's great."
Both officers say they hope to keep the fundraisers going in the future, and make sure that next time, they have more wax.
