Former Green Party candidate Mike Morrice reflects on his battle with cancer

Mike Morrice is feeling much better than he had a year ago while campaigning as the Kitchener Centre Green Party federal election candidate, when he was diagnosed with cancer.

He had only recently wrote a blog post about the discovery, well after the federal election, and well after his surgery.

On Tuesday, Morrice appeared on the Mike Farwell Show on 570 NEWS, to talk about his battle with cancer.

He first started feeling the pain in July, six months into the campaign. Morrice was also losing weight, despite attending a number of kitchen conversations a week. No matter how much he ate, he couldn't keep weight.

He was feeling a “dull ache” in his left testicle. That's what prompted him to visit a walk-in clinic.

By late August, he was given the news: 80 per cent chance of testicular cancer. He had only shared the news with a few people, including his close friend and campaign manager, Asha.

But, the diagnosis never made it to the campaign trail. Morrice powered through to the end of the campaign, with the cancer diagnosis weighing on his mind.

“I think it goes back to the decision to run. It was such a deep sense of calling. I hadn't had that same sense since some friends and I started Sustainable Waterloo Region 15 years prior,” he said.

On the eve of the federal election, Morrice came second in Kitchener Centre, capturing 26 per cent of the vote. Not enough to displace the Liberal incumbent, but enough to make history for the Greens, drawing in ten times the amount of votes compared to the previous Green candidate.

A week after the election, he went in for surgery. The public none the wiser to what Morrice had been going through, until his May 2020 blog post detailing his journey.

“I felt like if I was to inject my story and all of that, it would have been a distraction from the stories of my neighbours, and it would have shifted the focus to me and that's to me, not the job I was applying for,” Morrice said about the decision to keep his cancer under wraps. “In the weeks after, I think if I'm honest, was probably a more selfish choice around wanting to wait until I felt kind of well enough and comfortable enough about it, to start sharing it.”

Nowadays, Morrice is feeling much better, back to his normal weight, and thankful that he had the surgery done when he did. His surgery would have been considered elective, and would have been held off as part of pandemic measures.

Around this time of year, he would be playing hockey, but like many of us, he has had to turn his energy to other activities that haven't been cancelled.

The former candidate is still heavily invested in the issues he campaigned on, but he won't say whether he would consider campaigning again, next election cycle. For now, he'd rather put his efforts into pushing for change outside of Ottawa.

That being said, he has been polishing up on his French.