Movember Classic raises over $30K for prostate cancer research

The annual Movember Golf Classic in Kincardine celebrated its biggest year yet last month, raising almost $31,000 for men’s cancer research.

The tournament was launched by local Todd Thompson, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in January 2020.

Thanks to a quick surgery, he is now cancer-free, but the positive outcome caused him to align with the Movember campaign.

“I kind of thought, I want to do something more fun instead of the old ‘grow a moustache, give me money’ type of thing,” he said. “I have a hotel and restaurant management background for planning events and stuff like that so I decided to do a golf tournament. The first year we sold out and raised $13,000 and it’s just gotten bigger and bigger.”

The Movember Golf Classic was held September 19 at Ainsdale Golf Club. Thompson said this year registration opened in June and filled up in minutes.

All told, 140 golfers participated in the fifth annual event, which runs weeks earlier than Movember, but Thompson says that’s part of the charm.

“When I first started I thought, I’ll have the Movember in September golf tournament, I thought it sounded cool and it was kind of better weather predicting. It’s gotten shortened to the Movember Golf Classic since then,” he said.

Combined with a Movember campaign in 2020, the first year after his diagnosis, Thompson has now raised over $150,000 towards the cause.

“As much as I’m proud of that, I’m more proud of the word that’s getting out there. I have a lot of guys that call me and ask me questions, and not even about prostate cancer… I have lots of guys tell me that because of this they’ve went and had something looked at, something they’ve been putting off, and I’m just as proud of those numbers as I am anything else,” said Thompson.

He said he’s already working on planning next year’s tournament, and updates can be found at the Movember Golf Classic website.