1250 Participants Raise $2.6 mil in The Shoppers Drug Mart® Weekend to End Women's Cancers...
Friday, July 22, 2011
By: Weekend Alberta

...benefiting Alberta Cancer Foundation. Funds raised will be used in 17 facilities across Alberta

Calgary, July 23, 2011 – Today, the Alberta Cancer Foundation announced that 1250 participants raised $2.6 million in the seventh annual Shoppers Drug Mart® Weekend to End Women’s Cancers™. The funds raised by the Weekend over the past six years have allowed the Alberta Cancer Foundation to invest nearly $24 million for breast and gynecologic cancer research and programming.

After Opening Ceremonies at Currie Barracks, participants embarked on the first 30 km of their walk through the city. Tonight, they return to Currie Barracks where they will be camping overnight and resting in preparation for Sunday’s final 30 km. Their weekend journey continues on Sunday morning and ends with an emotional Closing Ceremonies at Currie Barracks at 3:15pm. Family, friends, and supporters are invited to greet and cheer on the Walkers as they make their way to the finish.

“Weekend participants, their supporters and donors have helped us take major steps toward the end of women’s cancers providing much-needed support for cancer research and screening programs here in Alberta,” says Myka Osinchuk, CEO of the Alberta Cancer Foundation. “We want to thank each of them for rising to the challenge and ensuring this event was an outstanding success for the seventh year in a row.”

Shoppers Drug Mart® Weekend to End Women’s Cancers™ funding is already supporting more than 80 research projects in Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge. State-of-the-art digital technology and two mobile screening facilities, also purchased with Weekend funding, offer greater accessibility to mammograms for women in more than 100 rural communities each year. These units, equipped with an examining room, have the potential to offer mobile cervical screening in the future.  

“We have so many questions about cancer,” says Steve Robbins, director of the Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute. “We are still grappling with why one person develops cancer and another doesn’t, why treatment works in one person and not in someone else. The funding participants raise for the Weekend help ensure we can keep building knowledge to find cancers earlier, treat them better and even prevent them from developing in the first place.”

The eighth annual Shoppers Drug Mart® Weekend to End Women’s Cancers™ benefiting the Alberta Cancer Foundation is already planned for July 21 to 22, 2012. For more information about the event, or to register as a participant for next year, contact 877-394-WALK (9255), or sign up online at www.endcancer.ca.