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20 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday June 2, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Mattamy's Tour de Blue benefits Hospital for Sick Children By Andrew Fruch SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER It may not be the Tour de France, but it might as well be, as a group of cyclists are gearing up for a ride across the nation in order to raise money for Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. The Mattamy Homes Tour de Blue, an event organized by Oakville-based Mattamy Homes Limited, will see riders, including Mattamy CEO Peter Gilgan, ride cross country from Vancouver to Toronto. "Eight of us are going to ride from Vancouver to Port Carling," said Gilgan. "The other 40 (cyclists participating in a weekend ride) are going to ride up from Toronto on the weekend, on Saturday. And we're going to meet them in Port Carling and ride back to Toronto." Now in its third year, the Tour de Blue is hoping to raise a total of $500,000 for the Hospital for Sick Children that will be used to fund research in pain management. The Tour de Blue came about quite Living Healthy A series of FREE public education seminars by SNORING AND SLEEP APNEA Wednesday, June 6, 2007 y, , 6:00 pm Displays and Refreshments 7:00 pm Presentation by: Dr. Laurence Chau, Respirologist & Medical Director, Sleep Clinic, Halton Healthcare Services Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital g p 327 Reynolds Street, Oakville L6J 3L7 FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO RESERVE YOUR SEAT TODAY CALL 905-338-4379 Supported by: by accident according to Gilgan. "We were actually training for a ride that got cancelled, a bunch of us here at the company," said Gilgan. "So we said, we're not going to stop training, and it's always better to train for something. We wanted it to be something that was going to have a lot of appeal to kids and people. And what better than the Hospital for Sick Children, it appeals to everyone, and they said yeah, sure we're interested. So it just sort of really went from there." So in 2005, the first year of the event, $116,000 was raised for Sick Kids, and last year, an impressive $390,000 was raised. After this year's event, the total raised for the Hospital for Sick Children over the last three years will be more than one million dollars. For the Hospital for Sick Children, fundraising activities like the Tour de Blue are essential for them to remain one of the leaders in medical care for children. "We have lots of large and small companies that do things right from the get go," said Dr. Sheelagh Kemp, an Anesthesiologist for the Pain Management Department at the Hospital for Sick Children. "And they're very important for extra services and things that the government doesn't provide for us. Specifically for us on this one, is the pain initiative at the hospital." DEREK WOOLLAM / OAKVILLE BEAVER See Tour page 21 READY TO GO: Mattamy Homes CEO Peter Gilgan (left), Dr. Sheelagh Kemp from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, and Kryz Tomaszewski, of Racer Sportif, at the press conference for the third annual Tour de Blue.