Marie-Chantal Dumont

“I was lucky to have healthy children, and that’s really why I get involved in the Tour CIBC Charles Bruneau. I get emotional when I think about how I would hope for people to step up to help if it were my kids who were sick.

Growing up in Montreal, everyone knows about the Tour CIBC Charles Bruneau, because that’s where Charles Bruneau was from. Years ago, four year old Charles was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away when he was twelve. In his memory, his father Pierre has continued the fight for a cure for childhood cancer.

The Charles Bruneau Foundation helps treat our sick children – I always call them ‘ours’ because the next generations are our future. Here in Gatineau where I now live, the Tour is less known and that’s what makes me want to get involved even more, because we race for our children in this town, too.

I feel  like my support of the foundation – through racing and fundraising – is making a difference for these kids. With all the research that’s been done over the years, the survival rate for little ones battling cancer is up to 80%. That’s much better, but we need to continue asking for more support, in hopes that one day every child will survive. For me that hope is what the Tour represents.

So I race my bike, bake my maple fudge – the best maple fudge in the world – and make gift boxes to raise donations! I even get my husband to help. My clients feel invested in the Tour because they see that I am. I have clients who donate to the cause and then come back and say, “Send me the link to your online donation page – we want to donate again!”

I am just a small drop of water but with enough small drops, eventually we end up making an ocean of change – I like to put it that way.“

– Marie-Chantal Dumont, banking centre leader at CIBC