{"id":18142,"date":"2017-08-23T12:18:12","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T16:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18142"},"modified":"2017-08-23T12:18:12","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T16:18:12","slug":"walker-urges-people-to-cherish-lifes-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/walker-urges-people-to-cherish-lifes-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Walker urges people to cherish life\u2019s challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n

Lionel Strang scoffs at the idea he might have any trepidation about walking from Downtown Toronto to Barrie.
\nLike the men and women who joke that they climbed the mountain because it was there, Strang laced up and made the trip simply because he could.
\nWell, it\u2019s not quite as simple as he lets on.
\nThe 63-year-old Barrie man has been battling stage four melanoma since 2014.
\nFirst diagnosed at Royal Victoria Hospital, he was referred to Princess Margaret Hospital where he volunteered for experimental therapy. It is now 2017, nearly three years after his initial diagnosis that he wouldn\u2019t make 12 months.
\nWhen he first beat that one year marker, he and his friend Barb decided to celebrate with a fundraiser barbeque to benefit Princess Margaret\u2019s Psychosocial Oncology Centre. They continued the event to mark the second year on his cancer journey but this year he decided to up the ante.
\n\u201cI have seen so many people at the hospital who are suffering so much more than me,\u201d Strang told The Auroran shortly before his walk took him through the heart of Aurora on Sunday afternoon. \u201cI have been very fortunate with my cancer experience so far, and I just realised that so many people are so much worse off than me. In this day and age of people complaining, I just wanted to do something.
\n\u201cIt seems kind of weird to say I am fortunate, but I just wanted to do something and I got the idea from the guys in World War Two, including my dad, who would walk miles and miles, and then there was Terry Fox who ran 28 miles a day, and I thought I could walk from Princess Margaret to the barbecue. So many people are working hard and I am just standing around, so why not walk? There wasn\u2019t a whole lot of thought to it other than doing something because I can.\u201d
\nAfter his initial diagnosis, Strang said his wife and son essentially had to carry him out of the hospital, but after going to Princess Margaret and learning about Dr. Anthony Joshua\u2019s clinical trial, he decided to give it a go.
\n\u201cI figured I didn\u2019t have anything to lose at that point, and if I could help humanity move forward that would be a good thing,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI started to go and I kept going. The wonderful thing about Princess Margaret Hospital is they are quite willing to admit they don\u2019t have all the answers to all the questions and they are just as thrilled as I am, which is also a wonderful thing.\u201d
\nWith each day that goes by, Strang feels more \u201cblessed\u201d than the day before.
\n\u201cI met a lot of people [at the hospital] who are cancer patients; we\u2019ve lost some heroes, gained some warriors, and it is hard to explain what it is like to be in this ball of wax,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have two choices: you either curl up and stop, or you keep going. I didn\u2019t get sick, so I kept going. Here I am, three years later, thinking: \u2018I\u2019ve got to do something to help this hospital as much as I can and this is what I came up with to make people aware.
\n\u201cHaving problems are a good thing. If you have problems, that means you\u2019re alive. That is what each and every human being on the planet wants. If you\u2019re standing in the wrong line at Costco, that\u2019s a good thing. If someone cuts you off when you\u2019re driving, that\u2019s a good thing. If you\u2019re struggling financially, that\u2019s a good thing because it means you\u2019re alive. I am doing this walk because I can, and I am not supposed to be here. Half the fun will be being too tired, being too hot, or being too cold if it rains.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lionel Strang scoffs at the idea he might have any trepidation about walking from Downtown Toronto to Barrie.
\nLike the men and women who joke that they climbed the mountain because it was there, Strang laced up and made the trip simply because he could.
\nWell, it\u2019s not quite as simple as he lets on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/2017-08-24-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4IC","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 05:18:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}