To a tea – Winnipeg Free Press

Two years ago, Carole Vivier was settling into a new chapter in her life, having just retired from a nearly 30-year career as the CEO of Manitoba Film and Music in 2019, when her life abruptly changed again.

Vivier was told she had lung cancer.

“I feel like the cliché, you know, the person that worked for a million years, retires, and within that year gets The Diagnosis,” she says. “It was a shock.”

The last time this writer interviewed Vivier, we were in the boardroom at MFM, talking about the highlights of her legacy-leaving career. Today, we’re in a boardroom at CancerCare Manitoba, where Vivier is currently serving as a volunteer.

She’s harnessing all the tenacity, passion and commitment — as well as a keen eye toward community building — that defined her career and bringing it to her role as co-chairperson of this year’s Guardian Angel Benefit for Women’s Cancer, a marquee annual fundraising event for CancerCare Manitoba and the first one to take place in person since the pandemic.

As a patient, Vivier, 71, had interacted a lot with the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, who asked her if she had suggestions of names for the benefit organizing committee, including chair.

“I was giving names of suggestions — but I never put my own,” Vivier says. She was daunted by the idea of being in charge of such a large fundraiser and was also concerned about her own health status. But when co-chairing was floated as a possibility, Vivier was in, as was her co-chair, Karen Bryk. The pair had crossed paths professionally before, and Bryk says she has always been a huge Carole Vivier fan.

“When Carole calls you and asks for your help, you never say no to Carole,” Bryk says.

Before she was planning “Manitoba’s largest tea party,” as Sunday’s event is billed, for CancerCare Manitoba, Vivier was a patient.

A round of chemo and immunotherapy followed her diagnosis in October 2021, as Vivier grappled with a life-altering diagnosis during a life-altering pandemic.

“It was a challenging time, made all the easier by the incredible care and support and treatments here at CancerCare Manitoba,” she says. “I mean, they really do take care of you.”

After 12 weeks, a CT scan showed the lung tumour had shrunk, but the tumour in the lymph node had grown significantly. “I was like, ‘OK, that’s not good,’” Vivier says.

At that time, Vivier’s oncologist was in the process of setting up a new clinical trial in Manitoba that, as it happens, targeted Vivier’s specific biomarker mutation, the MET exon 14 skipping mutation. After a battery of tests, Vivier became the first Manitoban patient for the clinical trial.

After six or seven weeks of treatment, the news from the CT scan was good: everything had shrunk down by about 70 per cent, including the lymph node. “The clinical trial is working,” Vivier says. She’s been on medication since March 2021 and is doing well.

To have this specific trial for her specific mutation is extraordinary, Vivier says.

“I really feel like I have guardian angels around me, so this,” she says, referring to the Guardian Angel Benefit, “feels kind of apropos for me.”

You need a lot of teacups to host Manitoba’s largest tea party.

The planning committee asked the public to donate their cups, with a goal of 1,500. The response, Vivier says, was overwhelming.

“A lot of people put notes in their teacups,” Vivier says. “And reading those stories was really heartwarming. So again, it’s that sense of community. I wasn’t quite prepared for it, you know, reading about, ‘these are my grandparents’; they were given these when they got married.’ Or, ‘this was my mum’s and my mum died of cancer,’ or this was my aunt’s or my sister’s.”

Bryk’s 84-year-old mother volunteers twice a week at Mennonite Central Committee, and she immediately took on the teacup-collecting challenge, asking the CEO if they could collect and donate them as well, and then calling her daughter with weekly teacup-tally updates. Bryk’s parents were both longtime volunteers with MCC.

“My father passed away, so I think it was a little bit of my mother’s healing journey to be able to help to do this,” Bryk says. “For her to be present at this event and see all these teacups she helped collect adds another story.”

Hosting an afternoon tea party as opposed to an evening gala was an intentional choice, meant to evoke gatherings in halls and church basements and people’s living rooms. Tea is embedded in many cultures, which is why the event will feature teas from around the world. Tea is ceremonial. It’s ritual. It’s comfort.

“I think a tea party in itself says community,” Vivier says. (Guests are encouraged to take home their teacup as a souvenir.)

Having that community connection point is important since, as Bryk points out, just about everyone is touched by cancer in some way. Getting involved in this event was easy, she says. “Nobody goes to the Olympics without a coach,” she says, “and nobody gets through this without CancerCare.”

Vivier, for her part, wants others to have the same life-saving care she did. “The money they raise contributes to the cost of the research, and the research leads to clinical trials, and that saves many lives, extends many lives,” she says. “You know, as they like to say, it gives us all more tomorrows.”

Vivier has already made good use of her tomorrows. This summer, she took her youngest granddaughter to New York City. It’s been a tradition for Vivier to take each of her granddaughters on a one-on-one trip to the Big Apple.

“I have to say, one of the first things that crossed my mind was, ‘I may not be able to take Ella to New York,’ and it made me kind of cry,” Vivier said. “It was a big deal for me. Thanks to this clinical trial, I was able to take her. We went to New York and had a blast. I have all the pictures with her like I did with the other three. That was very special.

“They’re important moments. So, to get those moments when sometimes at first you think you might not have them? Yeah, it’s a big deal.”

Tickets for the Guardian Angel Benefit are available at support.cancercarefdn.mb.ca, as is access to the online auction, which is live now. Note: you do not need to attend the event to bid in the auction.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @JenZoratti

Jen Zoratti
Columnist

Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and co-host of the paper’s local culture podcast, Bury the Lede.

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