Five years ago, JP phoned me out of the blue and told me I needed to join a new cycling event to raise money for palliative care in a hospital. JP was doing it for his father, who he was losing to cancer. He needed to do something – anything - to make sense of what was happening to his father and his family.

I jumped at the chance to do the ride. I had lost my mother to leukemia, and to ride in her honour meant a lot to me. She had been in remission when she died unexpectedly. I wish I could have gone through the palliative care experience with her. Not being able to take that journey and say goodbye was a difficult loss.

I didn't know much about palliative care, but I knew enough to realize that if people didn't even know what palliative care was or if they weren't willing to talk about it openly, they certainly weren't raising money for it.

This became crystal clear one day when we were taking a promotional picture of our fundraising cyclists. A passerby asked what we were doing. We explained we were trying to raise money for palliative care, and then explained that palliative care is about improving the quality of life for patients facing life-threatening illness and their families. The woman asked, "Why would you raise money for dying people?"

Ouch! It was precisely because of this attitude that we needed to raise awareness and funds. The answer to her question was simple for us. We believed the final stage of life was no less important than the beginning.

The problem, as we quickly discovered, was that our cause was not winning popularity contests when it came to raising funds. It's so much easier to raise money for a cure. The hope and optimism that accompanies curing a disease beats the reality that people die, hands down. We tried explaining to anyone who would listen that spiritual hope and healing in palliative care were equally important.

Apparently the subject wasn't popular with cyclists either. When we hadn't managed to register very many cyclists, the hospital that we were raising funds for made a business decision. Our fundraising efforts were rejected, along with our heart-felt eagerness to help people live their final days in comfort and dignity.

We were crushed, but we had to do something – we couldn't stand inaction and we didn't want to give up our dream. So we made our own business decision.

With summer approaching, JP and I created a new ride. Given that we only had three months to put an entire event together from scratch, it wasn't the smartest business decision we'd ever made. Initially we had no name for the ride and no website. There was the possibility that we wouldn't have enough time to put all the details together or be able to pay for all the expenses. We only had each other to use as a sounding board. So we brought our skills together – JP knew everything about bikes and how to sell the ride and I knew how to organize and get things done.

Our bike ride proposal sparked feedback that we didn't always like. Some individuals thought we should change the focus of the ride to cancer research. We resisted. We weren't prepared to sell our ride any other way. We figured our cause was nothing if not egalitarian, as we were pretty sure everyone dies eventually.

With some seed money from JP's bike store and our determination intact, we begged and cajoled until people were willing to either cycle or volunteer. The day of our ride came on a beautiful sunny day. We had t-shirts, balloons, hamburgers and even some draw prizes. I will never forget the sight of 27 cyclists crossing our make-shift finish line after riding for 100 kilometres, with huge ear-to-ear grins on their tired, sweaty faces. I got goose-bumps.

While the $27,000 we raised that day wasn't earth-shattering, I could see the potential that the hospital failed to recognize. I knew what we had accomplished. So what do ordinary people do when they get goose-bumps? They find their calling.

In the end, I can say, without an ounce of resentment, that having the first hospital turn down our fundraising efforts was ultimately the best thing that could have happened. I've learned so much about palliative care, met wonderful nurses and doctors who care deeply about their patients, met grateful families who were profoundly touched by their palliative experiences and I've been enriched by it all.

Today, we're still doing our annual ride. Our stubbornness has paid off, and within the next year we'll be completing a $1 million pledge to a much smaller, but much more grateful hospital – The Credit Valley Hospital. Then we're on to our next project - fundraising for hospices across Ontario.

I figure rejection isn't always a bad thing – it can lead ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things.

For more information about The Healing Cycle ride on June 27, 2010, visit www.thehealingcycle.ca or call Heather Campbell at 905-820-6081.