March Column

Hello, my friends! Happy March!!!

This month, my column is a little different… 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of my father’s passing away…

So I wanted to write a little bit about how Sir Jason handled adversity, even calamity…

I was thinking about my father and how he handled himself when we got the word that he had terminal cancer back in 1977. I’ve often wondered what makes someone special in that when receiving that news—instead of rolling over and dying like the doctor said he would—my father fought back, embarked on a worldwide expedition to find something natural to help him… formulated Jason Winters herbal tea… went into remission and changed millions of lives all over the world.

I think he had that certain something… that spark, that was what made him different from everybody else!

In my father’s case, he was never normal—

He tested seatbelts for Jaguar in New Zealand by smashing a car through a brick wall.

He canoed 2,200 miles from the Great Slave Lake to Inuvik in the Arctic Circle down the mighty McKenzie River.

He was one of the first people in Canada to get a balloonist license and had a hot air balloon named the Maple Leaf, which he successfully used to cross the Rockies by hot air balloon, from Abbotsford, near Vancouver, to Medicine Hat in Alberta.

And my father took his balloon across Canada from Vancouver to Halifax, Nova Scotia, raising money for the United Appeal.

Then he proceeded to tackle the Atlantic and took off in his helium balloon, only to crash into the ocean days later. Instead of having a basket, he had a boat underneath his balloon, and that decision saved his life…

So I guess having cancer was just the latest adventure for him. He often told me being diagnosed with terminal cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him.

It’s difficult to compare my life to the incredible adventure that was my father’s life, but I’m happy to have been some small part of it, happy to have grown, happy to have witnessed it—and I’m happy to continue my journey…

We are all capable of greatness. We are all capable of going beyond our measure, exceeding our limits. I think it depends on how hard we’re pushed.

Have a happy March!

“Don’t forget how wonderful life is and how marvelous you are.”