World Cancer Day: Interview with the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan
Nora Yeates, CEO of the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan. Image courtesy of Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan.
Cancer eventually touches everyone. World Cancer Day is February 4th, and we interviewed Nora Yeates, CEO of the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan. The foundation does inspiring advocacy work and fundraising for the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency. This charity and its volunteers create safe spaces and support for individuals going through cancer treatment, fund research, and technology upgrades. They are a great part of the community, and as Nora puts it, “We are so grateful for the support we have received. We’ve been here for 5 years and have been growing because we're busy and we do find that people do want to help their neighbours, their friends, and their families.” Read more about the foundation below!
What led you to be involved in the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan?
The Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan is a brand new charity and I was working elsewhere when I got the call asking me to apply for the role. We are a fundraising partner for the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, so every dollar we raise stays in the province to support cancer patients and the work of the agency. For me, I had started my work in the charitable sector at the Canadian Cancer Society back in 2004. I loved working there, it was rural Saskatchewan, it was going out and meeting people, and people were giving up their time and money, but we could not keep the money in Saskatchewan, we could not support the Allen Blair Cancer Centre or the Saskatoon Cancer center, and that was really a tug at my heart. Throughout the course of my career in the charitable sector, my heart has always lied with cancer patients, and when this opportunity came up, it was a “this is my job, this is what I want to do”.
When you began your career did you ever imagine you would have a leadership role in this organization?
No, number one this organization never existed, number two, I never felt that I was a leader. I started my employment in the banking industry, and just happened to fall into nonprofit work and from nonprofit back to corporate, and there was a time when the company I worked for was sold and I was laid off as a single parent with two kids and I had to figure out what I was going to do. I had to figure out where I was going to work and be happy and raise these two children in a loving and supportive environment. I had some wonderful mentors in the city of Regina who made me work at figuring out what I wanted to do, and I realized I was the happiest when I worked for the people. When I was doing something that helped others, and that's all I ever wanted to do. I never dreamt of being a CEO of any organization of any kind. I like to mentor and work with people, so I continued to move up in my career. Promotions were the natural step, and you become more responsible for more people. I am actually a very shy, closed person, and it's out of my comfort zone. Including me, there are now six of us, five in Regina, one in Saskatoon, and were going to add another one in Saskatoon.
Purpose:
At the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan we are a fundraising organization, so we don't lead programs but what we do is raise funds for the programs offered by the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, We raise funds through one-to-one asks, which we call major gifts; we have gifts in wills or legacy gifts, we have monthly donors, annual donors, and we run campaigns. We just completed the campaign to replace to mobile mammography bus/breast screening bus that travels the province, we raised that $2 million. The programs that we do fund through the agency do fund a lot of supportive care for patients. They offer a transitions program: when you're done with your treatment, and you ring the bell, and you’re cancer-free; emotionally and mentally it is a really hard concept as you have been living with cancer, they tell you your cancer free and to go out and live your life. That’s difficult, so they have a six-week transitional program. We fund yoga therapy, art therapy, journalling, exercise programs, wigs, and headwear for both men and women who want something to feel a little bit better about themselves while they go through cancer treatment. There are volunteers and social workers in each cancer center, so we support the needs they identify in the patients. Cancer is non-discriminatory, it doesn’t matter if you are homeless or if you have 10 million dollars sitting in the bank account, it can impact anyone. So the social workers will sit down and find the specific needs of a patient. Sometimes we will provide funding for fuel to get to their treatments, groceries, nonprescription medication, transportation, and nutritional supplements. It’s hard for them to get what they need to be as healthy as they can be while going through cancer treatment. A lot of the programs we fund are the patient care ones that are at the center, and then the equipment needs of the Allen Blair and the Saskatoon Cancer Centre, and the renewal of buildings for rural cancer patients.
How many lodges are in Sask?
There are two. There is one in Regina, right across the street from the Allen Blair Cancer Centre on Dewdney, and it is called the Regina Cancer Patient Lodge. The Cancer Agency is in the middle of doing a renewal on that building and were providing the funding. The other is in Saskatoon. Those lodges are where any patient who lives outside the city can stay there for $40 a night and they get three meals a day, they get a room, and a private washroom, there are communal areas where they can get together and talk to other people that are going through the same things they’re going through, and walk across the street for their treatment. Any patient who needs radiation treatment has to come to Regina or Saskatoon, and you look at the size of this province and you have to travel an hour to ten hours to get to your treatment, with radiation being every day of the week for multiple weeks, so they will stay at the lodge.You can bring your partner or caregiver along with you, and there will be rooms that have two beds, but we do support caregivers. It is a disease that doesn’t just impact the cancer patient but the entire family. The Saskatoon Patient Lodge is across the street on College Avenue from the Royal University Hospital and the Saskatoon Cancer Centre is right behind the hospital. Right now it is not open, it was closed three years ago because it became structurally unsound. That is something we will look at as something to fund a new building in the coming year or two.
What do you find most impactful that Sask Cancer Foundation is doing for the community?
I think we are bringing donors together in a coordinated way to make a real difference. We are telling them what the need is, The agency tells us what they need, and we get out and communicate that to donors. If we weren’t here, for the agency to try and get people to give money for a $1.5 million CT Simulator, they don’t have the money to do the advertising, the communications, and everything that goes on with that. Something that we do as a Foundation is bringing the community together and say “Let’s rally behind, and get this new technology for cancer patients”. Otherwise, people might donate to a specific type of cancer research that the agency is not doing, so that money just sits there. No donor wants to see their money sitting there and not making a difference. We can be the face and the advocate for the agency and the cancer patient. We see what the needs are and get out in the community asking for those funds to support the needs. It creates that impact. The foundation is also the place for people to tell their stories, and to connect with other people going through cancer. We are in our infancy, 5 years is not a long time when you think about the longevity of business or charity. We are looking forward, we are just putting the building blocks in place to look for the next 5, 10, 20 years out. We share patients' stories so that other cancer patients see they are not alone. Some people don’t want people to know they are going through cancer, they don't want other people to look at them differently, or feel sorry for them, but then they also feel alone, so if they can see other people going through cancer, they don’t feel alone. We also tell those stories to say that these are the people you are helping, because when a donor gives $100 to patient care and comfort, and then they want to know what $100 does. Every cancer patient has to take their temperature multiple times a day, if they don’t have a thermometer at home or they have the old analog thermometer- digital monitors are more accurate we can supply a cancer patient with a thermometer for $7. Now that doesn’t sound expensive, but when you're going through cancer treatment, everything going on, and all the stress involved in managing your family, your finances, your work, and your cancer, and the thought of going to a drug store to get thermometer can be overwhelming, and we can then say to a donor you have supplied 10 thermometers for cancer patients. That's huge, or you’ve paid parking for 10 cancer patients or provided a meal for a loved one who is sitting there for 6 hours while someone is getting a chemo treatment. We have nutrition carts that the volunteers push through the cancer centers that are filled with coffee, water, juice, and nutritional snacks so that anyone in the cancer center, and that's all covered by donors.
What has been the most inspiring moment you’ve seen in the community with the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan?
(Nora points to a poster framed and hanging in her office). John Hopkins and the Garage band. In 2019 we just launched the cancer foundation, and in a province that is so geographically diverse, we had to raise awareness. People didn’t know we existed, they didn’t really know everything we supported and we are separate from the health authority. There was nobody in the province fundraising for cancer care, were the only ones, so we had to get the message out there. The Health Authority looks after the hospitals, and they have 70+ foundations and auxiliaries fundraising for the hospitals in the province, but for the cancer agency side, where they look after cancer care in the cancer centers, there was nobody until us. The agency looks after the Saskatoon Cancer Centre and the Allen Blair Cancer Centre. The Allen Blair is inside the Pasqua Hospital, but it is not funded through the hospital foundation. We are now here and can provide that support. We are funding for screening, the lodges, first in Canada Cancer research. When you talk about the most inspiring moment, I think of John and the way his friends rallied around him and put that garage band together and then they decided they wanted to do something in support of John when he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. They raised over 1 million dollars for the new CT simulator in the Allen Blair Cancer Center, and John used it. It came full circle, and I think for me, what was inspiring was John's passion for helping others. To get the word out, to tell men to get checked, and then to also give back to the community by doing what he loved, which was singing. To see his friends step up and support him, they gave up so much time, practicing on the weekend, this was people like the VP of research at the University of Regina, and the CEO of the YMCA. These were people who had jobs, and they gave up time to practise, and to perform as friends of John, and they did it for free. There are so many inspiring memories. There’s this little girl named Rose, who baked cookies with her grandma because her grandma was going through cancer and she wanted to raise money to get the CT simulator in Saskatoon, and she sold the cookies, and we told her story, then Global picked it up, and then the Saskatchewan Heavy Construction Association said “Hey, would Rose bake cookies for an auction at our convention?” She had less than a month and we had to buy supplies and get them up to her, and she baked those cookies, and brought them down infront of these blue collar tough men and women, and people in the community and she sold these cookies with the help of Greg Ottenbreit who did the auction. She’s just a little girl, just 9 or ten years old! All of the stories across Saskatchewan of people supporting each other is inspiring.
What is the future of the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan?
The future of the foundation is huge. There is a great opportunity in this province to do more for cancer patients, to do more with their care and treatment, and to do more with the research. When we look at the future of the Cancer Foundation, and for cancer patients in Saskatchewan, more and more cancer treatment is about precision medicine and precision oncology, and it's about designing a treatment for you and your cancer. While there are more than 250 types of cancer in the world, how many people are in the world? Unless you are maternal twins, your DNA doesn’t match anybody, so put cancer in your body and then my body and it’s not going to react the same, so more and more it's about personalizing the cancer treatment as much as possible to the individual with cancer. Research is the future, people ask why is there no cure. Because there are 250 types of cancer and everybody is different and cancer is smart and it morphs. There are so many different types, so many different stages, depending on when you catch it. Early detection saves lives, we say that all the time, so when you say what is the future of the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan, our future is to continue to grow, continue to spread awareness, and to continue to tell people to do the tests. Our goal is not just about raising money for the Cancer Agency, but to raise money to support the people in this province. I’d love for anyone who can’t afford something to be able to come to the foundation, you can’t pay for your parking? We will cover it and so on. I would love to have a fund that says anybody who needs support with parking- no problem, anybody who needs groceries for two months- no problem. There are so many people in this province, 16 people every day in Saskatchewan are diagnosed with cancer, and you could be diagnosed, treated, and cancer-free and then back in the system in 10 years. My dad was diagnosed with cancer in September of 2019, in February of 2020 they declared him cancer-free, it came back with a vengeance in the spring of 2023, and he died in July. Once you become a cancer patient, you are forever in the system, and I think our role as a foundation is to always be there no matter what. Cancer is a very invasive and terrible disease, and we just want to be here for a long time to support cancer patients and the work the agency does.
What is the biggest barrier to cancer patients in Regina? How can Regina’s community improve on this?
I think the barriers are mainly geographical. If you need radiation treatment, you have to come to Regina or Saskatoon. That’s a barrier for a lot of people. Then the backlog in the diagnostics, so for you to be referred to a cancer center, your cancer has to be diagnosed. Until they get their diagnosis, their not referred to an oncologist. The PET-CT is only in Saskatoon, if your treatment requires that you have a PET-CT before you start treatment, and you don’t have transportation or you live alone, or in a rural or remote community, how do you get there? We’ve had people say “I’ll just let it go, roll the dice and see what happens,” and I think access to treatment is one of the barriers. It is why the mobile mammography bus is part of what the agency does to offer screenings because it goes out into rural Saskatchewan. It goes to 40 communities in a year and brings the bus there, women can jump off the combine, run into town to get their mammogram, and then get back on the combine. There are 16 oncology programs in the province, they are held and hosted by the hospital in the community, the program is delivered by the agency but you can have your closer to home if you qualify. You can go to your local hospital in Yorkton and get your chemotherapy if your oncologist prescribes it and deems that it is safe enough for you to do that, as opposed to having to drive into Regina to get your chemotherapy. The more that we can create equity to access and treatment, that would help remove the barriers. I truly believe that geography is one of the biggest barriers, especially for people living in the north.
What are the biggest biases that cancer patients face?
Depends on who you are. I think our community has a long way to go in recognizing individuality, not just who the individual is, but where they come from. For cancer patients coming into the system, we offer translational services. I think that is really difficult for people from another country where English is their second language, if it is their second language, to come in and understand what they need to do, how they need to do it, let alone their diagnosis and options. Getting to and from appointments, if you don’t drive or you're too sick to drive, how do you get there? It’s the people who struggle on the socio-economic side that I worry about. Homeless people, the people who are the sole-income of a household, and people who are new Canadians. We can talk about it all we want, and say how inclusive we are, but there is work to be done. It depends on your nationality, it depends on where you come from, I think we do have to create those resources to make sure that everybody feels welcome and I am so proud of the work the agency has done to help our Metis community. Every patient that comes in, gets a handbook and guide, and the agency has made a culturally sensitive one for the Metis, and it is offered to any patient. I think everyone has their own barriers but the socio-economic things need to be addressed. The fact that some people think cancer is a stigma, like “I have lung cancer” - “Oh, were you a smoker?”, it doesn’t matter. You get cancer and its cancer, nobody asks for it, nobody’s done anything to provoke it, it’s your immune system attacking your body, for whatever reason. It’s hard to answer because I'm not a cancer patient, and until you are a cancer patient you don’t know.
What do you want Regina to know about your organization?
I want Regina to know that we are here. If you would like to support cancer patients and keep your donations local and ensure that it goes back into your community, that’s who we are. As the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan, it's in the name, that the funds that are raised here stay here and are invested here in cancer care, treatment, screening programs, and research.
To read about the stories of the patients, donate, or find more information, check out the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan’s website: https://www.cancerfoundationsask.ca/