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Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me.

What I've learned from my own journey, and from my family's experience with cancer, is how important it is to stay positive and move forward. Not every day is going to be perfect; that's life. But staying positive is going to get you to the next day.

When it's said and done, the one thing I want to leave on this earth is hope. I have felt hopelessness, and it's a terrible feeling. Hopelessness will destroy you. I want to bring hope to other people.

If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.

I cannot escape the feeling that I was, at best, a cancer tourist, that my survival means I dabbled.

There have been setbacks, illnesses and other obstacles, so inevitably I've had disappointments. But once you realise that things can't always go your own way, you're on the right track to being able to handle your own life.

In life, loss is inevitable. Everyone knows this, yet in the core of most people it remains deeply denied - 'This should not happen to me.' It is for this reason that loss is the most difficult challenge one has to face as a human being.

Our purpose in this project is to begin to turn that fear of cancer, actually America's greatest fear, into a future, not only free of fear, but full of hope.

Everybody has a different journey. Everybody has a different path, and you don't really know what to expect. All you know is to just keep plugging away, and you hope something will come through and something will happen.

I guess I wanted to show people, among other things, that you don't have to be a hero to get through cancer. You can be a craven coward and get through. You have to stay on your medication and take your treatments, that's all.