About uS

It's no surprise that people usually care a lot more about a cause when they or someone they know has been affected. So let us introduce you to Geoff, so you'll know someone who has been affected.

Geoff liked:

• Cooking and learning new recipes

• Cats

• Staying informed on current events

• Reading fiction

• Bike rides

• Teaching (he's a university professor)

• Eating Tacos

• Ballroom dance

• Playing Dungeons and Dragons

• Travelling (Spain was his favorite destination)

One Friday in June of 2017, Geoff Hollis-Haynes became one of the 68 Canadians a day who are told they have a cancerous tumor in their colon. At only 34 years old, this was a shock as 93% of cases occur in adults aged 50+ . Geoff was rushed into emergency surgery to have the tumor and part of his large bowl removed. A few weeks later, he started his first rounds of chemo.

Four years later, two additional bowel resections, a liver resection, learning to live with an ileostomy and a nephrostomy, countless rounds of chemotherapy and dozens of rounds of radiation treatments later, Geoff’s cancer had progressed to stage IV and was considered aggressive and terminal.

Sadly, Geoff died in November of 2021, leaving behind a grieving wife, countless friends, his parents and in-laws and his three cats, at the too-young age of 38.

Geoff also loved hot sauce! Anything spicy really, but especially hot sauce. He loved eating it, he loved making it. He even tried to grow a pepper once (it didn’t go well). And the jokes basically write themselves when you think about a dude obsessed with hot sauce who literally had to have his butthole surgically removed. When you look at it that way, this hot sauce eating fundraiser was inevitable.

The Ring of Fire Fundraiser is being organized by Geoff’s wife, Kassia Hollis-Haynes, to honor her hot sauce loving husband, and to raise funds for colorectal research so all those facing bowel cancer have the best chance of survival. Ideally, no one should have to face what they had to face. And research is the only way to get there.