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Comments
Re: llness changes perspective for former Royal Bank Cup Junior
by EMARTZ37 on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 CHAD GOOD LUCK! KEEP FIGHTIN GOD BLESS!  ERIC FROM CANTON OH
Re: llness changes perspective for former Royal Bank Cup Junior
by chris914 on Thursday, May 10, 2007 stay tough buddy, the hockey world, and world is thinking about you Chris van Laren
Re: llness changes perspective for former Royal Bank Cup Junior
by RoadDawg on Monday, April 16, 2007 Was at the Stevie Y. Sunday afternoon and Chad got a huge standing ovation from the crowd of 1900 plus. Many were Lumber Kings fans from Pembroke. Not sure how much the event raised but a great thing for the Nepean Raiders to do and everyone here in Hockeytown is pulling for Chad to come through !! RoadDawg
by d-manjustin on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 i think at www.chadpecknight.com you can if not pm i know the guy running the whole thing
Re: llness changes perspective for former Royal Bank Cup Junior
by Xaviers19Hockey on Saturday, April 14, 2007 How can I give to the cause? If someone would post a place to donate I would love to help out. Thx.
Re: A close friend of ours
by Chabs on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 Played some summer tournament with him over the years. Unreal guy, tough to hear the news like this. I'll be attending, as everyone in the ottawa area should, for sure.
Re: A close friend of ours
by d-manjustin on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 i will be attending the night in aylmer for sure, what a sad story and it happend to such a great guy
Re: A close friend of ours
by navanboy on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 i just saw this story on the news..and was about to come on here and say this guy was wearing a gongshow hoodie..i think i might go to the game |
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The Nepean Raiders are an organization that harbours no grudges, coming to the aid of a grateful former player who once spurned them, reports Don Campbell.
Don Campbell, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, April 13, 2007
Now a little older, and as circumstance has dictated, all too suddenly a much wiser young man, if Chad Peck can laugh about anything right now, it's his short time as a Nepean Raider.
It lasted all of one 90-minute practice before then-Raiders coach Chris Byrne told him in not so many words that as much as he liked Peck's skills, he saw him as a third-line winger.
Peck, not totally out of character back then, disagreed. So much so, that quicker than you can drive from Peck's home town of Danford Lake to Kazabazua to shop, he was a Kanata Stallion.
Thankfully, all is forgiven. And Sunday, when the Raiders take to the ice for Game 4 of the Central Junior Hockey League final against the Pembroke Lumber Kings, they will honour and help the 25-year-old CJHL grad who is fighting the fight of his life. Peck has a rare type of sarcoma, a cancer with a high probability to recur that is more commonly found in young children.
Raiders owner Gord Black, a fellow West Quebec native, hopes to turn over more than $10,000 from gate receipts, a silent auction, a raffle and any donations to help the former minor league pro pay some bills as he undergoes treatment.
Supply teachers who take ill receive no benefits. Peck must rely on family to get by.
"I think (Nepean) was a little peeved," Peck said, laughing, yesterday. "But, at the time, there were two or three teams that wanted me and I had to do what was best for me."
In short order, he went from Jr. B with the Shawville Pontiacs, discounting the night with the Raiders, to the Stallions, then on to the Gloucester Rangers before heading east in 2001-02 to win a national junior A Royal Bank Cup with the Halifax Oland Exports.
For the following four seasons, Peck lived a nomadic existence in the low minors, with teams such as the Lakeland Loggerheads, Jacksonville Barracudas, Alabama Slammers, Motor City Mechanics, Fayetteville FireAntz and the Quad City Mallards.
Finally, last spring, it was time to take a real job.
So he started off last fall supply teaching at Symmes Junior High School and D'Arcy McGee High School in Aylmer.
All was well until early one morning in early November when Peck awoke with what he thought was just maybe some sleep in his left eye. He couldn't get it out, but nevertheless went to McGee to oversee a history class.
"The kids were watching a film and every time I turned out the lights, then turned them back on, it got worse," said Peck. "I had done some landscaping a while back and thought maybe I'd got a piece of brick in the eye. It was just the blurriness in the eye."
Three weeks later, the blurriness turned to darkness and Peck was scared.
He went from the emergency department at one hospital to an eye doctor to a neurologist who set up a magnetic resonance imaging test and put a "rush" on the results. Those results showed a "major mass" pushing on an optic nerve.
Peck, the patient, thought there would still be no problem: Get it out and his sight would come back. The doctor knew better. He told him it was cancer, a very aggressive form, and that it was possible he would go blind.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 
"At that point, really it was the first time I knew I had a problem," said Peck.
"(Losing) one eye, I could deal with. Two eyes? No way."
Two weeks later, on Dec. 12, Peck entered the Ottawa Hospital's Civic Campus for 12 hours of surgery, performed by three teams of doctors.
Peck has no trouble talking about how doctors cut him from the top of one ear across his forehead to the other ear. Then from his nose to his lip. How doctors need 40 staples to sew him up.
Radiation, five weeks worth, and chemotherapy followed. And they attacked it with so much vigour that the chemo, scheduled to run through June, has been temporarily put on hold. His burned feet and other parts of his once 205-pound frame just can't take it.
Ten days ago, friends tried to take him to see Sidney Crosby in the Senators' final home game. He couldn't make it.
"There are days where everything seems fine and other days when you don't even want to get up out of bed," said Peck, now battling to regain weight from a low of 160 pounds.
"It's tough because the world is going on around you like it always did and your life is on pause.
"It has changed my perspective on everything. I don't have quite the temper I did have anymore. Maybe I'm a nicer person.
"I think back and how I used to get upset if I got benched or if a coach skated us an hour- and-a-half.
"Then this hits out of the blue and now, where I had a mentality of being invincible, it's now possible I will die. Or I might think the cancer is gone and it will come back.
"But you see kids five years old with it. You see black people. White people. Old people. Young people. It hits everybody. You just never think it can hit you."
Peck promises to do everything he can to be at Steve Yzerman Arena on Sunday.
Black hopes to pack the place. When he heard the young man's plight, he knew he had to do something. And when he looked around, really the Raiders are the only game left in town outside of the Senators.
Trustee Donald J. Byrne will be on hand to accept donations to the Chad Peck Trust.
Byrne's son, Chris, now a student at Bishop's University, played with Peck with the Pontiacs. Peck's dad, Brian, used to coach when the boys played.
Byrne went to see Peck in hospital in December.
"I came out of the room and down the hall with tears in my eyes," said Byrne, a lawyer. "You start to equate it with your own son. A few of the parents we had been involved with in hockey all felt the same way.
"So that got us going."
The generosity of the Raiders is only the beginning.
Friends of Peck's, including singer Gail Gaven, plan a benefit night May 5 in the school gyms at the schools where he taught.
"It's unbelievable," said Peck. "You always have your immediate family and friends, but I am hearing from guys I haven't seen in five or six years.
"It makes you realize how small the hockey community really is, yet how tight it is."
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Chad Peck Benefit Day to be held April 15th, 2007.
The Nepean Raiders Jr.A Hockey Club are hosting Chad Peck Benefit Day on April 15th, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. in the Steve Yzerman Arena of the Nepean Sportsplex. This is game 4 of the CJHL Championship finals between the Nepean Raiders and the Pembroke Lumber Kings.
Chad Peck is a CJHL alumnus who has been struck with a cancerous tumour. Unfortunately, Chad is not covered by any disability plan.
The Raiders will be donating a minimum of 50% of all ticket sales and 100% of all funds raised through raffles and a silent auction in an effort to meet their goals for this one day event.
This will most likely be a sold out event! Don't wait to get your tickets. Information on ticket availability will be posted on the Raider website (
