Published: March 05, 2010

Ed Michayluk of Merritt carried the Olympic Flame through Granville Island on February 12 on behalf of the Heart and Stroke Foundation who were honoured to be invited to be part of the Olympic Torch Relay. (photo by Marelle Reid)

Three winters ago, Ed Michayluk got a phone call in the middle of the night that he had been waiting for, for a long time.

His new heart was ready.

The retired RCMP sergeant and his wife Gloria drove down from Merritt in the early hours of Jan. 31, 2007 to St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver where he underwent a six-hour transplant operation.

With heart disease running in his family, Michayluk knows how fortunate he was to receive a donor heart when he did. This was his third open heart surgery.

He lost two brothers, one at age 47 and the other at age 58, to heart attacks.

Michayluk had already had bypass surgery and a valve replacement to help his struggling circulatory system, but it wasn’t until he got a healthy new heart that his hands and feet were warm again and he could walk up a hill without having to stop two or three times.

“I felt like a new man,” he said. “It was unbelievable.”

An avid volunteer with the Heart & Stroke Foundation for over 25 years, Michayluk was asked by the organization to be one of 20 representatives to carry the Olympic torch on Granville Island on Feb. 12.

When he first moved to Merritt in 1974 he started canvassing door-to-door for heart and stroke as a way to meet his neighbours, and has been tirelessly campaigning for the foundation since then.

He has organized blood pressure clinics and health fairs and other initiatives in Merritt, and in 2007 received the Heart of Gold award for his years of service.

To be able to carry the torch for the Heart & Stroke Foundation was for Michayluk an honour in itself.

“It was an experience I can’t compare [anything else] to,” he said. “It was awesome. It was humbling. I felt like I had won the gold medal myself. Here I am, getting onto the podium.”

The packed street was full of happy people from all over the world, said Gloria, who was delighted for her husband that he was chosen to represent the Heart & Stroke Foundation in the relay.

"It was a very meaningful thing for us with Ed’s situation,” she said. “It was very special.”

Originally from the small town of Wakaw, Sask., Michayluk moved around a lot to different posts in his career with the RCMP. He has lived in Mission, Terrace, Prince Rupert, Port Alice and Atlin, B.C. near the Yukon border.

In Terrace he met his wife Gloria, who was a nurse, and they moved to Merritt where Michayluk was promoted to sergeant and Gloria got work at the Nicola Health Centre.

After he retired from the force in 1986, Michayluk worked as a coroner in Merritt for 18 years and with the security team at Highland Valley Copper for six years before becoming an insurance salesman.

Somewhere between all his jobs he managed to spend countless hours volunteering for the organization that he said made all the difference in his life.

“I can’t say enough for the Heart and Stroke Foundation,” he said. “And I certainly owe it to the donor. I want to share this event with the donor and family.”

Michayluk said he does not know who his heart donor was, but he intends to write a letter of thanks to his or her family for a wonderful gift and to let them know how far his heart has taken him