Montreal police officer honours father who died from rare cancer

A Montreal police officer is turning grief into action after losing his father to a rare and aggressive cancer.

A Montreal police (SPVM) officer is turning grief into action after losing his father to a rare and aggressive cancer.

Jonathan Berthiaume recalls that last July, his father, volunteer firefighter Sylvain Berthiaume, walked into a hospital to be treated for jaundice and back pain.

Doctors soon discovered he had cholangiocarcinoma, also known as bile duct cancer.

Seventeen days after his diagnosis, Sylvain Berthiaume died.

He was 64 years old.

“[It was] brutal,” said Jonathan Berthiaume.

Dr. Simon Turcotte, a surgeon-scientist at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), explains that cancer claims 300 to 400 lives each year in Canada.

He adds that survival rates are low when the cancer is caught late - but there is hope.

An upcoming clinical trial led by Turcotte is expected to test a new, more potent form of immunotherapy to help patients fight the disease.

“The idea is to transfuse white blood cells that recognize and kill cancer cells,” he said. “We take those white blood cells directly from a patient’s tumour, which needs to undergo surgery, and we expand the white blood cells. So, very large numbers are incubated in an incubator to make a cell product that we can then re-transfuse to patients.”

While the treatment comes too late for his father, Berthiaume says he is determined to help others.

On May 30, he plans to set out on a long-distance cycling trip, starting near the Montreal Fire Department’s Mont Royal headquarters and ending at the Saint-Damase fire station east of Quebec City, where his father volunteered for 20 years.

His goal is to raise $50,000 for cancer research.

“My dad didn’t have the time to make his fight, so I decided to make his fight for him,” said Jonathan. “To honour him.”