Cancer survivor delivers annual Halloween treat to Juravinski

From the moment Jessica Durka beat cancer four and half years ago, she set out to give back to the people who saved her life.

Durka's father, Mark VanGoethem, grows pumpkins in Norfolk County, so she and her husband, James, decided to open a pumpkin stand on VanGoethem's Waterford farm and donate all proceeds to the Juravinski Cancer Centre in Hamilton.

Four years and thousands of pumpkins later, the Durkas have collected more than $130,000 for the hospital foundation.

It's crazy how much we've grown," Durka said on Saturday while shoppers hauled away pumpkins, corn stalks, squash, straw bales and other items for sale at an outdoor market set up beside the pumpkin patch on Old Highway 24.

We get people from all over who are affected by cancer. They come from Ancaster, Burlington, two or three hours away just to get their pumpkins because they know it's going to a good cause," Durka said, adding that shoppers will often round up the purchase price to make a further donation.

All of a sudden it's not just us, it's the whole community coming together," she said.

This year the stand opened Sept. 18 and had raised more than $41,000 heading into the final weekend.

We actually ran out of pumpkins this year and another farmer came in and donated some to us," Durka said.

James Durka said the fundraiser could not succeed without the efforts of friends and family who volunteer at the stand and the many local farms and businesses that donate items to sell, including baked goods and floral arrangements that are a perennial hit.

That's the thing - it's the generosity you see when people keep coming," said Durka, a Hamilton police officer whose colleagues came to the farm last month to unload trailers stacked high with pumpkins.

That kind of drives us to keep doing it."

Every year the family hands over a cheque to the hospital foundation that is earmarked for a specific project.

Typically we like to give to the stem cell transplant unit, because I did have a blood cancer and that is something I might have needed if my cancer ever came back," Jessica Durka said.

It took six rounds of chemotherapy over the course of eight months to eradicate the disease after Durka was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2016.

With the cancer now in remission, Durka said she feels amazing" and is looking forward to continuing the pumpkin patch tradition for many years to come.

Every year we just grow and grow, so it's hard to give up," she said.

J.P. Antonacci's reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows him to report on stories about the regions of Haldimand and Norfolk.