Cornwall chiropractor Paul Poirier is not one to feel bitter or sorry for himself about the cards life has dealt him. "I'm a 6-foot-3, 280-pound machine of unstoppable optimism," he says.
For 16 years, brain cancer has been a part of his life, since an MRI following a seizure showed a mass on his frontal lobe. A biopsy found it to be a Grade 2 mixed glioma, a mixture of two kinds of cancerous brain tumours. He has undergone surgery four times. Last fall, he learned the cancer, which had been in remission for five years, had returned. Now it has infiltrated his speech centre and motor cortex, so surgery is no longer an option - "unless I wanted to be mute and partially paralyzed."

Now there is chemotherapy for 10 months, maybe 12.

"Most people lighten their stress load when dealing with chemo," said Poirier, who is 45. He and his wife have two boys, 8 and 5. "I prefer adding things to my plate in order to not focus on the half-empty aspect of my glass," he wrote to Applause.

One of the things on his plate is organizing motorcycle ride fundraisers to raise awareness about brain cancer and money for research: he has dubbed the effort Bikers Against Brain Cancer.

Poirier, an avid biker, has owned 13 motorbikes in his time: he acquired the first when he was just 14. The inaugural event, which took place last October in Cornwall, had 54 riders and raised more than $3,100 for the Canadian Brain Tumour Foundation. Attendance at a second Cornwall ride, which took place June 18, was double last year's - and the 105 bikers raised more than $15,300.

Poirier, a native of Cornwall, had a chiropractic practice in Montreal for 11 years before going home in 2008 to take over a practice there. He bought the home in which he'd grown up and says he is now "reliving my youth vicariously" through his young sons.

Since late 2009, he has been a member of the Cornwall chapter of the Kinsmen Club, a Canadian men's service club with 7,000 members across the country working to help their communities. Fellow Kinsmen volunteered readily at last year's ride and this year's: Poirier says he knows he could count on them to organize the ride without him, were it to come to that.

The key to the success of this year's Cornwall ride was word of mouth from last year's riders, Poirier said, and the sponsorship dollars pledged by their friends and family members.

Four more rides are slated for this summer: in Montreal on July 9, Ottawa on July 30, Joliette on Aug. 20 and Toronto on Sept. 3. Rides are three hours long; Montreal's will start in the Kirkland Coliseum's parking lot at 11 a.m.

Poirier is contacting Quebec motorcycle clubs to remind them to inform members of the Montreal ride, but says he is keeping his expectations modest since the rides are being organized for the first time. "If I'm lucky, I'll be pleasantly surprised by having more show up than expected," he said. And he is philosophical. "Even if I get only 25 riders in Montreal this year, next year will snowball a little more, and so on, so that within a few short years it'll be a phenomenon to be reckoned with."

Poirier is adamant that the ride is not about him, but rather the cause: the goal is to spread awareness about brain tumours, he said. "We want people to realize that its not just 'old' people like me and Ted Kennedy who are affected," he said. (The longtime senator, who had a malignant glioma, died in 2009.) Brain cancer affects children, too. In fact, Poirier is dedicating this year's rides to young Joel Fast of Apple Hill, Ont. Like Poirier, the 5-year-old boy has brain cancer.

"Joel is our tough little man," his parents wrote. He began to have headaches in late 2009; soon they became more frequent and were accompanied by vomiting. A CT scan in March 2010 showed a mass in the posterior fossa. After an MRI, a surgeon explained where in the brain the mass was and that doctors believed it was a medulloblastoma, a form of malignant brain tumour: the pathology would confirm this. The tumour was removed the following day in an 11-hour operation, which left Joel quite disabled: he was unable to sit up on his own or to walk, for instance, with facial paralysis and loss of motor control on one side. For a brief time, he was unable to speak.

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