Joanne Morrison describes her husband’s battle with brain cancer as “a rollercoaster. When things were good, they were very good — and sometimes things were very bad.”

Guy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour in 1997, after he suffered a seizure. Two weeks later, he had surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible. He started radiation therapy, and when that didn’t work, he had chemotherapy, which had terrible side effects — but in the end prolonged his life. At first, he was given 18 months to live, then only two or three.

And yet, says Joanne, throughout it all, Guy remained upbeat and positive. “We were very lucky that he wasn’t in pain, and that the brain cancer did not affect his personality. That’s not the case with all brain cancer patients.”

Because Guy could no longer drive, Joanne drove him to a one-day training session to become a peer volunteer with the Canadian Cancer Society. “Since I was there, they asked me if I would like to volunteer to become a peer support volunteer for caregivers. I thought, ‘Why not?’”

It’s a position she still holds today. Being a volunteer, she says, means listening without judgment, acting as a sounding board for caregivers, and being someone they can talk to openly, to whom they can say all the things they can’t tell anyone else. “There’s a real need for people to talk to someone who’s been there.”

When Guy felt well, he and Joanne travelled. He celebrated well into the night at his son’s wedding. He received the “Volunteer of the Year” from the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. He worked with Peel Region to have pamphlets on the signs and symptoms of brain tumours inserted into all the water bills in the region: “Several  people wrote to the Brain Tumour Foundation to say that the pamphlet saved their lives,” says Joanne.

In May 2001, an MRI showed that Guy’s brain tumour had started to grow again. For the first time in ages, he got quite depressed. And then, he found his old blood donor card in his wallet. His blood type? B-positive. Guy read it as, “Be positive!” “ That turned him right around,” says Joanne.

Four years and four months after his diagnosis, Guy Morrison died, surrounded by his wife and sons. “The hardest part, of course, was knowing I was going to lose him and not knowing what to expect,” says Joanne. But she treasures each moment she and Guy shared. “Guy made it very easy for me to be a caregiver.”

Today, the Pencer Brain Tumour Centre at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto awards the Guy Morrison Volunteer of the Year Award.  “I have the pleasure of giving it to someone worthy every October,” says Joanne.