Sarnia firefighter Roel Bus has set a personal goal of adding $2,500 to the more than $10,000 he has raised since 2016 for Toronto’s SickKids Foundation during this year’s Great Cycling Challenge.
Cyclists taking part in the national fundraiser set a personal riding goal for the month of August and raise donations and pledges to help the foundation’s efforts to find a cure for childhood cancer.
Bus said he’s just one of 144 riders in the Sarnia area taking part in the challenge.
His goal is to ride 1,250 km in total during the month.
Something new this year is that Bus has arranged to pedal his bicycle in stationary mode Friday at the Davis Street Refined Fool location from 4 pm to 8 pm and complete 100 km of his total.
“It’s a great cause,” Bus said about what attracted him to the ride back in 2016 when it began.
“In the summer time, I generally ride to work,” he said. “So I thought, ‘why not put it towards a good cause.’”
The event has raised more than $30-million, in total, since 2016 in support of research into treatments and a cure for childhood cancer, according to the foundation.
“Everybody has been affected by cancer,” Bus said. “It there’s any small thing that I can do to help people, that would be great.”
Bus said he hoped to raise $500 in donations the first year he entered and collected more than $1,400.
“So I kept doing it,” Bus said.
The event started out being held in June but was initially canceled in the first year of the pandemic because of public health restrictions, he said.
Later that year, the event returned in August and has remained at that point in the calendar since then.
Bus said he decided to add the public event at Refined Fool this year using a training set up he uses during the winter months.
“People can come and say, ‘hi,’ and see what the challenge is all about,” and if they are inclined to, “throw a couple of bucks in jar” or make an electronic donation, Bus said.
They can also provide some moral support, he said, “because I might need that in the fourth hour.”
Bus has a page on the challenge’s website, greatcyclechallenge.ca/Riders/RoelBuswhere supporters can make donations.
Bus grew up in the Netherlands, where he cycled often, and came to Sarnia in 1992 where he joined the fire department in 1994 and has worked in its prevention division for the last decade.