Two Calgary men pay touching tribute to their late wives' legacies

Two Calgary men are honouring their late wives' legacy this Mother's Day in a very touching way.

Both of them lost their partners to cancer, but they're working hard to make sure that their legacies live on.

Will Morlidge and Don Wood are bonded for life. Tragedy brought them together, when Morlidge lost his wife Rebecca to cancer in 2017, while Wood's wife Sherry died in 2020 of the same thing.

"First and foremost, it's dealing with the shock," said Wood, from the still-under-construction Calgary Cancer Centre. "I had a young son at that time. He would have been 11 at the time."

Morlidge said his wife didn't stop living once she got diagnosed with cancer.

"It was just something my wife had," he said. "But it didn't really stop us in anything. We did anything. We went anywhere."

But even after their passing, their memory lives on through a building.

"It was her goal to see this come to life," said Wood, "and to see especially the research piece and everybody housed all in one building."

But the Calgary Cancer Centre has a deeper meaning. As volunteers with the facility's patient and family advisory council, Morlidge and Wood provided input on the design and the services going into the facility.

Rebecca, it turns out, was one of the original founders of the volunteer group.

"I think the legacy for Rebecca is going to be not the fact that she advocated for her own health care, but the fact that she advocated for everyone's health care," Morlidge said.

Honouring the legacy of their wives hasn't been the only aspect of the duo's healing journey. So has giving their time to a building that will go on to help others.

"It's been kind of a calling, so to speak," Wood said. "So it's passionate and it makes you feel young again, and it makes you keep those happy memories.

"When I'm here," he said, "I have only happy memories."

The Calgary Cancer Centre will open in late 2023.