Mother’s battle with pancreatic cancer inspires daughter to run New York Marathon and raise funds for research
When Vancouver resident Myriam Glotman started training for the New York Marathon she had no idea just how grueling it would turn out to be. She had not counted on running her first mara- thon only two months after her mother, Betty Ergas, died from pancreatic cancer. “It was really tough, especially near the end,” she recounts. “My mother’s cancer was just devastating for our whole family. However, training for the marathon was therapeutic, it helped clear my mind.” The next year Myriam, an active mother of three who is self employed in the family real estate investment business, ran the New York Marathon again, but this time it went differently. She made it a fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research and dedicated the run to her mother’s memory. “I was running and remembering her. I broke down at the end, but it felt good, I felt much stronger,” Myriam recalls. She was surprised how generous people were. “People I didn’t even know donated,” she says. “I could not have done it without my husband, Geoff, who helped me raise a lot of the money.” “Pancreatic cancer research is one of the least-funded cancers around,” she adds. “I knew I had to do something.” Working with the BC Cancer Founda- tion, Myriam set up a personal webpage, and e-mailed her friends and colleagues. “It was an incredibly easy way to fund- raise. The BC Cancer Foundation staff was really supportive. The program is fantastic in that you can reach a wide number of people and they can make their dona- tion instantly online and get a tax receipt right away. It keeps track of the donations for you.”
Myriam raised a total of $30,000, including $11,000 she and her husband donated as matching funds. It was used to create the Betty Ergas Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, to support a new multi- disciplinary pancreatic cancer research program started at the BC Cancer Agency by Dr. Sylvia Ng.
Find out moreabout creating a personal page
