Weekend Warrior: BC Children’s Hospital Foundation CEO Malcolm Berry rides to clear his mind

Malcolm Berry became the president and CEO of BC Children’s Hospital Foundation (BCCHF) in 2021, but his fundraising career can be traced back to the day he walked out of a children’s hospital without his child.

In 2005, Berry’s daughter Paige was born and diagnosed with a rare blood disease. She lived most of her seven-month life at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, where she won the battle against the disease, but lost the one against chemotherapy.

“We learned a whole bunch of things through that experience, but I think it gave us a context for the magic that our children’s hospitals come with,” says Toronto-born Berry. “There are only a handful of places in the world that [Paige could have received care at]—SickKids being one of them; BC Children’s could’ve been another.”

Shortly after Paige passed away, Berry slowly transitioned from a career in teaching to one in philanthropy as development officer of gift and estate planning at SickKids Foundation. And when his family members invited him to join their cycling group, he agreed to revive an old hobby for a greater cause.

As the group began participating in Ride to Conquer Cancer fundraisers together, cycling became an extraordinary outlet for their grief. “In many ways, it saved me after the death of my first child,” says Berry.

Nineteen years later, Berry’s hobby has morphed into an intense passion for mountain biking. “Honestly, I don’t know why everybody wouldn’t want to be on a mountain bike and just get up there,” he says. But how his teenage son Graham has sustained the same level of enthusiasm for the sport is a mystery to him.

“[A few years ago], Graham said, I think we should move to Colorado or Vancouver.” (At the time, Berry was working as the chief development officer of St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri.)

“I said, why Vancouver?,” Berry remembers. “And he said, in both places, they’ve got hockey, they’ve got really good fishing, but especially in Vancouver, they’ve got the best mountain biking in the world.”

It didn’t take much convincing for Berry to move his family westward, to Lynn Valley in North Vancouver, and to step in as the new CEO of BCCHF. The foundation supports BC Children’s Hospital—one of the top 10 pediatric hospitals in the world—as well as its research institute of 1,500 people.

According to Berry, BC Children’s was the first hospital in Canada to put a pacemaker in a newborn baby. “I have one of the best jobs in Canada, certainly in Vancouver,” he says. “There are days that are tough, but on the tough days, I think of Paige and that lifts me up on why we need to transform our system of care.”

The heavier the workday, the stronger Berry’s urge to go outside. When asked about his favourite trails in B.C., he notes that Mount Fromme has some “hard climbs, but the challenge of coming down and the variety of terrain is superb.” The first time he rode Bobsled (an intermediate trail), he declared it his favourite, until he was able to do Expresso, then Kirkford. Now he does them all.

Squamish and Whistler trails are also spectacular, he says. “One day, at the Whistler Mountain Bike Park last year—it must have been the start of August—I went up to the top, and I was just in the clouds. I couldn’t see more than 50 feet in front of me. It was kind of scary, but very memorable.”

Moments like these make the rough rides worthwhile, maybe even a little addictive. Being surrounded by trees is a great place of solace for Berry, who sees Paige in the leaves of nature, in the light that shines through the branches when he’s riding up a mountain.

“I tell you, every ride today, every pedal stroke up the hill, I think about [her],” he says. “She’d be 19 today. And I think about how much good has come out of a life that I’ve lived in terms of helping other people.

“Honestly, I can’t wait—I mean, if I could be at home right now, I’d be on my bike and I would probably ride up from my house to Mountainside Park and then start to navigate my way to the parking lot at the base of Fromme and make my way up Mountain Highway or use some of the back trails to climb up. I think about that all day.”

Warrior Spotlight

BC Children’s Hospital Foundation has been championing children’s health since 1982. It supports BC Children’s Hospital with fund­raising, programming, research, equipment purchases and more. The hospital sees about 140,000 kids a year, says BCCHF president and CEO Malcolm Berry, whose team works to ensure that the right people have the right tools at the right time to treat every ailment, from broken arms to rare diseases.