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Brice Royer was told four years ago that the tumour in his stomach would likely kill him.

He arrived at the doctor’s office for an update this week in a wheelchair and star-shaped sunglasses, accompanied by an entourage of four beloved friends.

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He felt weak and had a migraine, he explained, as he rose shakily to greet a Vancouver Sun team, but had made the effort to come from Coquitlam to the south Granville office for an important purpose: to check on the size of his tumour.

Royer reacted to his 2012 diagnosis first with denial and then depression. He became bed-ridden, weak and contemplated suicide.

Then he read love and kindness could help people heal. Giving and receiving freely, he learned, helps people build community and recover from depression.

In 2013, Royer started a campaign of random acts of kindness.

He gave a chronically ill single mother in Pennsylvania whom he had never met $4,800 from his own savings to pay rent for the year. Late last year, he spearheaded a campaign to build a home for another single mother in Vancouver who lived in a shelter with her daughter and had offered to cook for him. That campaign raised $25,000.