About uS

It's no surprise that people usually care a lot more about a cause when they or someone they know has been affected. So let us introduce you to Geoff, so you'll know someone who has been affected.

Geoff likes:

• Cooking and learning new recipes

• Cats

• Staying informed on current events

• Reading fiction

• Bike rides

• Teaching (he's a university professor)

• Eating Tacos

• Ballroom dance

• Playing Dungeons and Dragons

• Travelling (Spain was his favorite place so far)

One Friday in June 2017, Geoff Hollis-Haynes became one of those 73 Canadians a day who are told they have a cancerous tumor in their colon. At only 34 years old, this was a shock as 93% of cases occur in adults aged 50+ . Geoff was rushed into emergency surgery to have the tumor and part of his large bowl removed. A few weeks later, he started his first rounds of chemo. Four years later, two additional bowel resections, a liver resection, learning to live with an ileostomy and a nephrostomy, countless rounds of chemotherapy and dozens of rounds of radiation treatments later, Geoff’s cancer has progressed to stage IV and is considered aggressive and terminal.

Geoff also loves hot sauce! Anything spicy really, but especially hot sauce. He loves eating it, he loves making it. He even tried to grow a pepper once (it didn’t go well). And the jokes basically write themselves when you think about a dude obsessed with hot sauce who literally had to have his butthole surgically removed. When you look at it that way, this hot sauce eating fundraiser was inevitable.

The Ring of Fire Fundraiser is being organized by Geoff’s wife, Kassia Hollis-Haynes, to honor her hot sauce loving husband, and to raise funds for colorectal research so all those facing bowel cancer have the best chance of survival. Ideally, no one should have to face what they have had to face over the last four years. And research is the only way to get there.