Relay for Life: the 2024 Vincent Massey Chapter
Make a difference — join your school in the future movement.
This spring, Vincent Massey Secondary School’s Stangs for a Change committee this running a Carnival. The vibrant day of purple and orange comes May 24th, inviting students to a venue of entertaining activities and thematic ceremonies, inspiring a youthful vigour into the fight against cancer. The sentimental juxtaposition of its events rallies around life: students celebrating and optimising their livelihood while also mourning those that have passed. Proceeding by youth, for youth, Stangs for a Change is an inciting event of change—impending in the neighbourhood of Massey.
At the beginning of March at Relay University, a provincial convention of high school committees hosted by the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) in preparation to embark on Relay at individual schools. The Vincent Massey Stangs for a Change committee, myself included, travelled to London to attend, and were immediately engulfed by the tangible energy created by the young CCS representatives and other high school students. Throughout experiences of influential networking, energising activities, and the classic luminary ceremony, students were opened to a new reflexive attitude toward their lives in the reflection of cancer. Whether afflicted or untouched by cancer, the various lived experiences in the same room grew with others, and while enlightened by the social camaraderie and excitement, the grounding undertones of grief remained present. The subconscious stigma of the ‘C-word’ was challenged by the diverse speeches of survivors living beyond its conquest.
In the concluding luminary ceremony, yellow flames symbolic of cancer battles flickered in ranging strengths, some eventually ceding into the darkness. The aptly named Relay University convention represents its participants’ upcoming matriculation as it provides an educational environment regarding a successful Relay event and included the students of Massey’s Stangs for a Change committee to shed light on the Canadian Cancer Society.
While the planning of the Carnival has been annually completed throughout committees at Massey, its consistent cause is to fabricate a diverse society surrounding strength and hope in the wake of cancer. The unforgettable memories from a Carnival event are active reminders of our created communities holding physiological, emotional, and physical impact. Stangs for a Change inspires the personal action towards a shared goal, crossing distances of an elongated track towards the indefinite finish line that is cancer. The success of the event lies in the unique strengths of collaboration and teamwork, growing the empowering society of cancer awareness and support.
We tarverse from the formidable legacies lost to cancer in the past, and into its future movement; we relay across the trajectory of a cancer diagnosis, to bring hope to those currently in that reality.
Massey, are you ready to play a role?
Written By:
Ava Cooksley, Grade 12
The Stang 
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