Walking Together for Cancer Care

How caring people like you show up when cancer changes everything.

 

Lucinda and Little Garry are already asking about the next Fundy Trail Cancer Walk.

They call it Daddy’s Walk.

And they want to know when they can do it again.

Meliza Carpenter smiled when she said that, and then she swallowed hard. Because last year, when she gathered her kids, family, and friends and stepped onto the Fundy Trail, it was more than a walk. It was a promise.

A promise to remember her husband, Garry. And a promise to keep helping people, the way he always did.

“Garry wasn’t really the hiking‑in‑the‑woods type,” Meliza said. “If he was going to be outdoors, he’d prefer something like a motorcycle ride.”

He loved music. He loved people. He loved showing up. If someone needed a hand, he didn’t overthink it. He just helped. Neighbours. Family. Friends. Anyone, really. That was who he was.

So when Garry was diagnosed with cancer, it didn’t make sense at first.

“He wasn’t sick,” Meliza said. “He was tired, but we had two kids under three, and we were both working full time. We were all tired.”

Then, one-night, acute pain sent them to the emergency department. A biopsy followed. Then the diagnosis came: stage four melanoma.

“No words could describe that moment,” Meliza admitted.

Treatment started quickly at the Saint John Regional Hospital. Garry began immunotherapy with Dr. Margot Burnell. For a time, it worked. There were good results. There was cautious optimism.

And through it all, something stood out.

“The care here felt personal,” Meliza said. “They knew Garry’s name. They asked about our kids. They remembered things.”

She and Garry travelled to larger centres as well, exploring every option. “In bigger hospitals, you understand the volume,” she explained. “But there, he was a number. Here, he was Garry.”

Dr. Burnell, the nurses, the oncology team… everyone made them feel seen. And that human connection mattered more than Meliza ever expected.

“She was a straight shooter,” Meliza said of Dr. Margot Burnell. “But she was also human. She’d ask what we did over the holidays. She laughed when she found out we were getting married because she thought we already were.”

Meliza and Garry had been together for more than twenty years. They married after his diagnosis, at a moment when treatment was working and hope felt real.

“You hang on to it,” Meliza said quietly. “You have to.”

As treatment continued, Meliza spent long days in the oncology unit. And she began to notice the people around them.

“You realize pretty quickly that somebody is always going through something,” she said. “And you might not know.”

Some families lived far away and worried about rides to appointments. Some didn’t have benefits and couldn’t afford medications. Some were just doing their best to hold things together.

As she spent more time in the oncology unit, Meliza saw firsthand that cancer affects every part of a person's life — not just their health. It can create financial stress, emotional strain, and challenges that extend far beyond treatment itself. Support from donors helps make additional programs, services, equipment, and patient supports possible, helping patients and families navigate the cancer journey with greater comfort and dignity. So, when the Fundy Trail Cancer Walk came around, Meliza knew what she wanted to do.

Creating a team — Garry’s Legacy — was a way to honour Garry and to give back to the community that had surrounded them when Garry was first diagnosed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We come from a small community that truly rallied around us,” she said. “This was our way of supporting that same community in his honour.”

Funds raised through the walk supported the Dr. Margot Burnell Cancer Support Centre — a place made possible through donor support. The Centre offers care beyond treatment: mental health support, physical programs, and a space where patients and families know they’re not alone.

“It’s all community,” Meliza said. “The walk is community. The hospital is community. The Cancer Support Centre is community.”

Now, when her kids ask about Daddy’s Walk, Meliza keeps it simple.

“Daddy always helped people,” she tells them.
“This is how we honour him — by helping people who are sick, like Daddy was.”

The kids are still young, and they’re learning that kindness is something you do. That when life gets hard for someone else, you don’t look away. You step forward.

For Meliza, the Fundy Trail Cancer Walk will always be about more than a single day on the trail. It is a chance to remember Garry, to celebrate the community that stood beside their family, and to carry forward the values he lived every day.

His legacy lives on in the people who gather to walk in his memory, in the support offered to families facing cancer, and in the lessons his children are learning about compassion, generosity, and showing up when it matters most.

And when Lucinda and Little Garry ask when Daddy’s Walk is happening again, Meliza knows exactly why it matters.

Because they remember him.

And because, in their own way, they are already learning how to continue the legacy he left behind.