Heather and James Armstrong and their team, the MS Derailleurs, participated in the annual MS bike ride in the Cowichan Valley earlier this month. The event is a major fundraising effort for the group, as well as a very personal ride for Heather who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 47 and whose mother also has the disease.
“Why I ride is for the cure,” she said. “With my mom and myself both having MS it’s a very personal adventure.”
Together with other local riders Mac and Doe Fraser and Lucy and Mike Lambert, the team of nine had a fundraising goal of $12,000 this year.
When the Armstrongs retired to Powell River, they became frequent patrons at the local brewery, and when manager Chloe Bryana Smith heard about the ride, she suggested hosting a fundraiser.
“We’ve known Heather and Jim for four years now,” said Smith. “So we reached out to her to see if there was something we could do together to help them reach their fundraising goal.”
The event on August 8 featured a silent auction and interactive games. “It was great fun, people got quite into it,” added Heather. Best of all, the gathering raised close to $1,200, helping the team surpass its original fundraising goal by bringing the total to over $13,000.
Canada has one of the highest rates of multiple sclerosis in the world. Approximately one in every 385 Canadians has MS. Women are three times more likely to get the disease than men.
“It might be too late for me,” said Heather, “but they’re diagnosing it as early as five years old now, so for those ones, we need to find that cure for them.”
