When I crowed via cellphone earlier this year about having a rare opportunity to snag a running award, there was an awkward pause on the other end, almost like she was waiting for the punch line.
You know, running, award, me all in the same sentence. There’s got to be a bada-boom part, right?
Well, not this time.
After her shock sort of wore off, I quickly explained how RunVan’s hat trick works and that by completing this Sunday’s Fall Classic at UBC yours truly will receive a sweet shirt for crushing the BMO Vancouver Marathon 8K, Granville Island Turkey Trot 10K and Classic 5K trifecta.
She asked if the run would require a crazy costume — like the moose ensemble at last year’s Movember Moustache Miler, the “bunny thing” at the Easter Run or the wild “Gordfather” get-up at this year’s UBC’s Run for Women.
Highly unlikely I said, careful to never rule out last-minute brainstorms!
She said to “post pictures” then kind of begged that I hand the phone back to my wife, who she had initially called to discuss everything but running. My bad!
Sadly, there won’t be any more updates. And this Sunday I’ll be chasing down that hat trick shirt with an extra heavy heart.
Camilla Lee James, a wonderful woman born in tiny Lumsden, Sask. — a two-hour tractor ride west of my hometown Yorkton — went on to become a CFL cheerleader with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders, a proud business owner, Outrider coach, hip-hop diva (smile), mom and humanitarian. She died Thursday at age 46 of pancreatic cancer at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary.
Besides loving art, dancing, skating, football, travelling and baking, she always listed the proudest achievement as her eight-year-old son Tayemak, who last week when told CJ’s brave fight against cancer had only hours remaining, promised his mom that he would “be a good boy and take very good care of Grandma Jean.”
The next morning, as news of CJ’s death spread and tears flowed, Burnaby crooner Michael Bublé announced his three-year-old son Noah was diagnosed with cancer and asked for prayers in the tough days ahead. We all could relate.
Clik here to view.
Camilla Lee James, and her young son Tayemak, all decked out for a Calgary Stampeders’ game. CJ was a cheerleader and then a cheer coach for the Outriders. She died Thursday in Calgary of pancreatic cancer.
CJ’s Celebration of Life takes place Sunday afternoon in Calgary, about an hour after this sloth finishes the Fall Classic. Her friends and family, cheerleaders and my heartbroken wife, will be gathered in the Chapel of Eden Brook Funeral Home.
CJ had requested that everyone wear bright colours and smiles — purple and orange especially — to the celebration. The colours will definitely be the easy part.
One friend who won’t be there is former Outrider cheerleader Danielle Marinelli-Boehm, now of Langley, who cheered with CJ in Calgary and remained very close. She gave birth Tuesday night in Burnaby to a four-pound baby girl — Ariana Charlize Jade (CJ) Boehm, and can’t travel. You can imagine her emotional roller-coaster week.
I met the new mom in one of those believe-it-or-not, bucket-list moments.
Clik here to view.
Danielle Marinelli-Boehm, who gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday, stands in front of CJ and her girlfriends before her 2014 wedding.
CJ had asked me to be the Outriders’ co-manager for a day in 2001. Really, what she needed was some extra muscle to take all the cheerleaders’ calendars and place them under the McMahon Stadium stands, so at halftime the girls could grab them and sell them to drooling spectators.
About 45 minutes before kick off, CJ called the cheer team together in a locker-room to go over the “game plan.” I was sitting in the room nursing a hot chocolate and examining the sweet calendar (for print quality, of course) when CJ clapped her hands a couple times and said “OK ladies, let’s get ready.” The not-so-shy women began stripping right in front of me, including Danielle.
Despite all the big talk about “managing my girls,” I turned 50 shades of Stampeder red and bolted for the door. Anything less would have been so Anthony Weiner-ish, right?
My wife, who went on numerous girls’ trips with CJ, and to many Grey Cups, said CJ was “like the sun” in their fun relationship.
“All the girls were like planets that revolved around her. We all knew CJ, even if we didn’t always know each other. She brought us all together. She had that easy-going, caring style everyone loved.”
CJ and the girls attended the 2013 Grey Cup in cold Regina, where they got to see the Riders win on home turf. They went nuts after discovering they made the evening TV sports highlights as Mounties carried the Grey Cup right past them and their party thermoses.
Clik here to view.
At the Scotiabank Half-Marathon and 5K, we had CJ on our minds and on our bibs.
A year earlier, on another girls’ trip, they attended the Grey Cup in Toronto, where CJ, my wife and our great friend Anita Sehgal — who was always like a sister to CJ — got into a hotel elevator and saw two women, in their late 60s, covered in glitter, with noise-makers, drinks and Argo jerseys having the time of their lives.
“We looked at each other and said that’s going to be us when we get old. We promised each other we’d still be doing that in our 60s, living the dream,” my numb wife said this week as she packed for Calgary.
The last time CJ stayed at our place, we discussed her difficult and emotional job of doing hair and makeup at funeral homes.
Working off pictures and family information, she worked relentlessly to ace the desired look. Because it was the final time people would see their loved ones, she took extra care and great pride in creating the perfect lasting memory.
It’s something she had no problem doing for us, too. We will forever miss her, love her and always remain CJ Strong!
Flucking cancer.
FINISH LINES — Except for a few openings in the 5K, the Fall Classic at UBC will be another sold-out event for RunVan as some 3,000 runners will lace up for the half-marathon, 10K and 5K races. For Sunday’s schedule, click HERE. … MEC Langley will wrap up its superb 2016 race season with the Williams Park 10K and 5K on Saturday morning. For info, or to enter, click HERE.
Gotta run …
Clik here to view.
We ran for CJ and others battling cancer at the April Daffodil Dash in Surrey, where hundreds of others had names of loved or lost ones written on their race bibs. It was a touching morning.
Clik here to view.
