For nearly 15 years, Ray Lindsay was a member of the Comox Valley Prostate Cancer Support Group. The group provided a volunteer hospital visiting program for patients with prostate cancer and led education and awareness activities. One of their significant contributions to men’s health was helping set up accessible PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) testing locations within the community.

Ray describes the community support of the group as “phenomenal,” and speaks of many individuals and organizations that helped including a local barbershop quartet that regularly donated the earnings they received from serenading people on Valentine’s Day.

With the growing volume of online resources and changes in confidentiality rules for visiting patients in the hospital, the group determined that people were able to find information and resources in other ways, and completed their operations in 2015.

Ray recently visited the Foundation, along with his daughter RaeAnn Hartman, retired nurse and Associate Dean of Health and Human Services at North Island College, to donate the remaining funds from the Comox Valley Prostate Cancer Support Group to assist the Urology Department. Ray is pleased that these funds will contribute to the purchase of digital ureteroscopes and thrilled that the donation will benefit the community where the money was raised.

We are honoured to have received this donation, to learn of the important work of the former Prostate Cancer Support Group, and to hear of the tremendous community support that surrounded them.