Kelly Dubuc’s son, Sam, has been easygoing from day one. “He was just chill out of the gates,” Kelly, of Guelph, Ont., recalls. “I called the nurse in after he was born and said, ‘I think there’s something wrong with him. He never cries.’ She put her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Consider yourself lucky. You’ve got an easy baby.’” Through the years, he’s maintained the same happy, positive attitude.

It’s not something that you’d expect to hear from anyone, however, brain tumour survivor Jedro Magtoto says the prospect of losing his life made him start living it on his own terms. For years, Jedro worked in a corporate sales position, succeeding at his work, but feeling incredibly unfulfilled.

Rebecca Grundy believed in using her voice for change. She’d been working as a government lobbyist for the Progressive Conservative (PC) party in Ontario and as a successful public relations and communications professional. In the latter, she worked on campaigns for Rethink Breast Cancer and lobbied to bring Novocure’s Optune device, a wearable treatment for glioblastoma, to Canada.

Nicole Atkinson has been active all her life, taking part in activities like hiking, snowboarding, lacrosse and hockey. In fact, she’s fresh off the ice from a hockey game when she takes the call to share her story—a testament to how far she’s come since that day she suffered a seizure in August 2022.

When I think of my dad, I think of his smile first, and the chuckle that would usually follow it. Dad—whose name was Alvin Rehberg, or ‘Big Al’ to his friends—was a solid six-foot-three, with arms I always felt safe in. He loved his girls—me and my younger sister, Hayley—more than anything, and I never doubted that he would be there if we needed him.