Ian Bowling is getting a haircut.
For most people, that’s a weekly or monthly occurrence. But Bowling’s hair hasn’t seen the backside of a barber’s set of shears for a long, long time now.
Indeed, the reason that he’s getting a haircut is to help raise money for the Fort St. John Hospital Foundation, who are raising money for a new SPECTRA Workstation, to reduce the turnaround time of tissue samples, in turn decreasing the time it takes for diagnostic results for cancer patients.
Indeed, it is that focus on cancer that caught Bowling’s attention. “We’ve had a lot of cancer in our family. The number of people in my family who have had cancer and gone bald because of the treatment I can’t even count on both hands. And it’s not just people I am related to. When I took my dad to get his treatments, there was a baby less than a year old that had cancer. I had a relative pass away from cancer just before Covid.”
So, after growing his hair out, he was planning on donating it to make wigs for cancer patients, but I was talking to someone about the Bluey Day in Fort St John, which I’ve never heard about. So I went in and got the information, and now I am going around asking for cash donations and there are pictures up around town if people want to do online donations.”
Bluey Day is an annual fundraiser for the Fort St. John Hospital foundation. Over the past 23 years, over $2.1 million has been raised for the Cancer Diagnostic and Care fund help purchase emergent equipment needs for the Diagnostic Imaging Department, Laboratory, Surgical Department, and Endoscopy Suite so that cancer patients can remain in the Northeast, rather than having to travel to Prince George or even farther for treatment.
Bowling says he is going to go to Fort St. John on May 28 to get his hair cut. So far he’s raised over a thousand dollars, not counting online donations. (By his own admission he knows nothing about technology, so has no way to check. “I’m dumber than a sack of hammers when it comes to phones, so I don’t know how many are donating online,” he says. “I’ll find out when I get my hair cut off.”)
Bowling says the first person he knew who had cancer was his grandfather, who died when he was just ten years old. “The last time I saw him alive, he was up in his hospital room looking out his window. He waved. The next day he was dead. I had a cousin who was 33 years old with cancer. Another cousin was 44. She said she had a pain in her neck at Christmas, and she was dead by May. There are no boundaries for cancer. So figured this is my own personal donation. I’ve had my hair cut off before, but I just never thought about donating to cancer until now. I’m so old; I have a few more years of whatever’s left. So this is my little last shot at being able to help.”
But are kids going to be upset having white hair? He doesn’t think so. “They actually look for gray and white hair.”
Bowling has been going door to door over the last few weeks, but he isn’t able to reach everyone in town, so he is telling his story to the paper so that people who he might not have otherwise been able to reach can donate.
“I bumped into a group yesterday, and started talking to them. Some put their hands in their pocket and some didn’t. I’m not a heavy handed person. It’s up to them and people could donate to other sources—to heart disease or to kidney disease of to the diabetes foundation—, so I can’t just demand to have donations for my hair.
Donations can be made in Bowling’s name by going to tinyurl.com/ynuvtf29 .
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
