On June 13, David Sugarman will join 35 other cyclists on a trek across Canada as part of the second Sears National Kids Cancer Ride. The coast-to-coast journey from Vancouver to Halifax aims to raise $2 million for childhood cancer research.

“It seemed like too good a cause for me not to get involved with it,” says 40-year-old Sugarman. “One hundred per cent of the money goes to the cause.”

Nearly 1,700 Canadian children are diagnosed with cancer each year, and money raised from the ride will help support local oncology units and raise national care standards.

Unlike many other fundraising events, riders pay their own expenses, and money raised outside that goes directly to the charity. In addition, each of the cross-country riders are committed to raising $25,000. For Sugarman, founder of Succession Capital Corp., this means turning to friends and business contacts for support.

“When you tell people the facts, it’s not hard for them to open their cheque books,” he says.

Writing a cheque is one thing, pedalling thousands of kilometres is another. While Sugarman has been a cycling enthusiast for the past 10 years and previously rode in last year’s Ride to Conquer Cancer, he’d never taken on a challenge this big before. So he’s been training hard since his application to take part in the Vancouver to Halifax cycle was approved in January.

Sugarman and his fellow riders expect to travel about 300 kilometres a day during the 12- day event. That’s on top of the more than 7,000 kilometres pedalled during training.

“We’ll train 15 to 30 hours a week, so it’s a huge commitment, but the cause is just too important,” he says.

The training process has been a challenging one for Sugarman, who is often on his bike for two to six hours a day.

While it can get monotonous, Sugarman has been getting together to train with a few other riders in the event. They work with a professional endurance trainer and have a nutritionist working with them as well.

“It’s really tough, but you have to be dedicated,” Sugarman says,“and to see the benefits of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”

When not rigorously training, Sugarman enjoys spending time with his young daughter and wife Laurin, who calls herself his “biggest fan.”

 Post City Magazines salutes David Sugarman for putting the pedal to the medal for medical research.

“You don’t look crazy!” I announce, upon meeting my private self-defence instructor and welcoming him into my home. I had next to no information about my instructor, except that he was the proprietor of something called Crazy Bob’s House of Death and that he went by Crazy Bob.

I HAD IMAGINED a beefier, tattooed dude, who looked like a bouncer at a nightclub or a bodyguard for Britney Spears. The man standing in front of me had a broad smile, a laid-back attitude and not one tattoo or piercing to be seen.

Crazy Bob is tall (6’ 3”) and lean (175 pounds) and looks more like a college-bound student of philosophy than a man who has taught hand-to-hand combat for 10 years. He trained for his first degree black belt in combat jiu-jitsu and has a black belt in tae kwon do.

I tell Crazy Bob I was a little worried based on his website. “You know, the skeleton thing?” I explain.

“But it’s a laughing skeleton,” he says, with a big smile. That’s what makes Crazy Bob’s House of Death so interesting. Crazy Bob may be a fighting expert, but he also has a sense of humour.

“It’s a little different from your typical martial arts place. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. What we do take seriously is providing excellent combat training,” says Bob. “Striking, submissions, takedowns, ground fighting, weapon disarming, multiple attacking defence, anything you need to know about fighting, minus the macho attitude, with a little humour thrown in to keep it light.”

The third question out of my mouth is, “Could you kill me right now?” (I know. I should have at least offered him a glass of water first.)

“Well.” Crazy Bob smiles. “Yeah.”

“Great! Let’s get started,” I say.

I try to get information out of Crazy Bob about his background, but he’s very private. I feel lucky to learn he’s 30 and became interested in martial arts as a teenager after studying American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s work.

Crazy Bob never wanted to live under a threat of violence, so that’s why he took up mastering fighting.

Psychology does play a large part in fighting. He says most bar or schoolyard fights happen because one man doesn’t want to give up because of his ego.

“Kick him in the nuts,” says Crazy Bob. “That way he can at least go back to his friends and say, ‘He fights dirty.’ You want to give them a reason to give up.”

Crazy Bob has brought along props including a rubber gun and a rubber knife, both that scare me just looking at them. He teaches me that, along with the groin area, the other most important thing to know is how to head butt. (I cannot overestimate the importance of hurting someone in the groin area when it comes to self-defence!)

“Everyone should know how to do a head butt,” he says. “That’s basic.”

It’s not like in the movies, he explains. To do a proper head butt, you should look at your attacker’s chin, so your hairline really hits them in the nose area. Ideally, you should head butt multiple times while grabbing the attacker’s neck and bringing it to your head.

I also learned that it’s easier to fight off someone with a gun than someone with a knife. Holding the fake gun to my head from behind me, he explains that I can grab the forearm, and all I have to do is turn the gun in any other direction but at me (while also kicking in the groin). A knife, however, is sharp all over and harder to grab. If someone is coming toward you with a knife, you grab that arm like it’s a sandwich, with two hands, and try to wrestle it away. How? You guessed it, knee to the groin!

“For self-defence for someone like you, it’s always about head butts and the nuts,” he says. “Part of the reason is that it is ingrained in men that that place hurts the most, and so they will go down.” I learn that punching someone in the jaw is the best place because “punching someone in the jaw causes the jaw to crush the hypoglossal nerve, as well as causing the brain to ricochet off the inside of the skull.” Crazy Bob teaches “usable” skills and has clients who have started in their 40s, even 60s.

“It’s not about learning to be tough. What does ‘tough’ mean? It just means you can take a beating,” he says.“If you call me up and say you got into a fight last night and you’re raging mad and say you want to learn to fight, you’re not for us.”

What learning self-defence or fighting does, he says, is it empowers people.

I ask what to do if someone breaks in and I’m home. He asks what would I want out of it. “I would want to get out alive. They can take anything,” I tell him.

“In that case, I’d run into your master bathroom, lock yourself in. You should always have a locked room you can go to and a phone available.”

I ask him I what it feels like to know he can protect himself and others at all times.

“Well, I don’t walk around the streets like Batman,” he says, again with a smile. “But my classes sure are fun.”

Sifting through seemingly endless piles of toys, clothes and books, packing them into hundreds of boxes, and then figuring out how they’ll reach remote fly-in communities like Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, a.k.a. Big Trout Lake First Nation, sounds like a daunting task. But for Maxine Roness, executive director of the Kids Come First Child Care Centre that organizes the Between Friends Aboriginal Clothing and Book Drive twice a year, a decade of experience helps the process.

On April 22, the centre packed up the batches of clothes, books, toys, sports equipment and household items to be delivered to 14 aboriginal communities across Northern Ontario, such as Pikangikum, which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

Due to the size and carrying capacity of the planes that access the fly-in sites, several boxes won’t reach their final destination for a few months.
“We don’t like to use the word ‘help,’” Roness says of their efforts. “We’re not saviours, we’re just lending a hand.”

The drive was inspired by Roness’s daughter, who was working at an Aboriginal centre in Thunder Bay, when she saw a need that could be filled. “We thought it would last a year,” she says. “That was 10 years ago!”

“ We don’t like to use the word ‘help.’ We’re not saviours, we’re just lending a hand."

For Roness, the drive’s success can be measured by the fact that they are now a recognized name in the communities they supply, by the letters of thanks they receive, and by the donations made not only from people, but from larger manufacturers like book suppliers. Although the next drive isn’t scheduled until October, donations are accepted year-round and are kept in storage until they can be used.

Alongside the drive, the daily work of the Kids Come First Child Care Centre is equally important. Established in 1992, the charitable organization now serves 800 kids between pre-school to school-age, at two locations. Roness, and co- executive director Toni Pellicano have implemented an “emergent curriculum” with a hands-on approach to learning that is being revamped on a daily basis. “Every thing is derived from the needs of the children,” she says.

The kids also take part in the clothing drive, and are educated as to why they are taking the initiative and how it helps.

Although the centre has won numerous awards and grants such as the Donner Canadian Foundation Award for Child Care and the Ontario Trillium Foundation Grant, and Roness herself was awarded the Civic Hero Award by the City of Vaughan for her dedication to her work, she says it’s still a struggle to find funding.

“Getting a plane isn’t a problem,” she says, referring to the drive. “Getting boxes isn’t a problem, but money is.”

Post City Magazines salutes Maxine Roness for her dedication to kids in Aboriginal communities.