Dr. Jon Hooper carries on late wife's legacy at Ottawa Race Weekend
As he manages his grief, Dr. Jon Hooper has the benefit of a persistent voice in his head, which steers him away from mournful lethargy or self-pity.
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It belongs to his wife Sindy, an ebullient triathlete and hospital administrator who died in September 2024 after living with pancreatic cancer for 11 years.
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'Whenever I start to feel sorry for myself, I can hear her say, 'Hey, come on, get up, let's do something, let's take advantage of this day,'' says Hooper, 66, an anaesthesiologist and critical care physician.
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Hooper's latest initiative centres on advancing his wife's remarkable fundraising legacy. In the past 10 years at Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend, Sindy Hooper raised $513,644 for pancreatic cancer research by leading the Make Every Moment Count (MEMC) team.
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With the help of Sindy's former teammates, Hooper has ensured that work will continue: this year's team has already raised more than $66,000 for cancer research.
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'Everyone just agreed Sindy would want us to do this,' he says.
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Janet McKeage, chair of the Ottawa Hospital Foundation's board of directors, will be running the full marathon in memory of Sindy Hooper as a member of MEMC crew. Friends for more than two decades, the two met playing soccer, then took up distance running together.
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'What I've learned is it's way more fun training with Sindy than not training with her,' says McKeage. 'Sometimes I ask myself, 'Why am I doing this?' then I think about everything she went through and just kept going.'
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Dr. Hooper, an accomplished triathlete, won't be running on race weekend because he'll again be working as a volunteer. He has served as medical director for Ottawa Race Weekend for more than three decades.
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'It's a nice way of giving back,' says Hooper, who last fall received the distinguished service award from Ontario's anesthesiologists.
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During his career, Hooper took part in more than a dozen humanitarian missions to countries such as Ghana, Peru and Bangladesh, and spent a year providing health care in rural Ethiopia.
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He retired from The Ottawa Hospital to be with his wife when her cancer spread, but returned to work because he felt so lost after her death. His intense grieving period was complicated by retinal tear surgery, which forced him to spend two months flat on his back.
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He knew returning to work would not relieve his heartbreak, but it did bring a welcome sense of normalcy. Hooper still walks around his Kanata home talking to Sindy — and turns when there's no answer.
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