More than a thousand runners and walkers, clad in every hue of pink — festooned on hats, leggings, wristbands and shirts — took part in the annual Run for the Cure Sunday.
Organizers said the 1,600 participants gathered at Riverside Park is a record and shows local commitment to the fund-raising event.
Brian Paradis was one of them.
His wife Gail, is a breast cancer survivor who ran Sunday with a group from a local gym. Four members of that group are cancer survivors.
Paradis said colleagues from an office in Edmonton convinced him to participate, and to delve deeply into the pink symbol of the event to raise money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
"They said they'd send a whole bunch of money if I wore all this stuff," Paradis said.
His uniform included a pink hat, wrist bands and feather boa.
"I can't let them down," he said.
Kamloops is one of nine locations in B.C. to host the run sponsored by CIBC.
Ian Gardiner, a board member of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, said $2 million raised over the past two years has gone to research grants in this province, including for detection, treatment and therapy.
"These efforts are paying off."
Gardiner noted the death rate for breast cancer patients has declined 30 per cent since 1986, a factor due in part to awareness around mammograms. B.C. has the lowest mortality rate in Canada.
"That's real progress we've made together."
Premier Gordon Campbell announced Sunday the province will contribute $500,000 this year.
Organizers were buoyed not only by the size of the run but the ideal weather Sunday, with sunshine and warm temperatures in the morning.
Volunteer run director Jennifer Edwards said the Kamloops event targeted raising $200,000.
"The money is still coming in," she said before the run.
At the end of the day the event here raised $226,000. The provincial total was $3.6 million.
Friends Karen Straub and Lois Huyder boarded a bus in Clearwater early Sunday morning to take part.
"I'm here for a friend who had breast cancer, a surviving friend who had breast cancer," Huyder said.
Huyder said her friend recently finished treatment and invited her to participate in Sunday's run.
While many people at the run prepared for weeks, Straub said she declded Saturday evening she'd join.
"We're all affected by cancer. I had two friends die within three months of each other."
One of the few participants not dressed outlandishly in pink was Tk'emlups Indian Band chief Shane Gottfriedson, who was dressed in black.
"My father died of cancer," Gottfriedson said, choking with emotion at times as he spoke to the crowd of more than a thousand people.
"I'm running for you women who have survived breast cancer. I'm also running for my father."
