Former hockey player and Montrealer Dean Stock – a young father who was very public about his ALS diagnosis in December 2014 and made it his mission to advance research into treatments for the deadly neuromuscular disorder – has lost his battle with the disease on Friday at the age of 39.
Even in July, his wife, Paula, said he was fighting for each breath, for his words and for his very life as he battled the disease. She told the Montreal Gazette at the time that she didn’t know if he would make it to Christmas.
After he was diagnosed in the prime of his life almost two years ago, Stock – a former professional minor hockey player whose brother, PJ Stock, is an ex-NHLer and television hockey broadcaster – organized a community fundraising softball tournament in August 2015 in St-Lazare to help raise money and awareness on the road to finding a cure for the crippling disease.
He was slurring his words back then, but this past summer Paula said her husband had deteriorated rapidly, losing 50 pounds and the ability to speak.
But he hadn’t lost his drive to find a cure for ALS, often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is actually an exciting time on the drug development front for ALS, with a host of promising drugs on the horizon and new protocols in treating patients who are all striving to prolong their lives – and Stock wanted to exploit that.
He participated in clinical trials and hoped to raise money to advance the work of Dr. Angela Genge, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute’s ALS Clinical Research Program, whose goal is to turn ALS from being a two-year disease (although some survive longer) to making it a five-to 10-year disease – a significant improvement. And the MNI is very much at the forefront of what Genge has said she hopes will be some significant advances in the field.
But Stock won’t only be remembered as a crusader for ALS.
Stock played minor hockey in Dollard-des-Ormeaux with his brother PJ. Both moved on to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League where they played for Victoriaville then continued on to play CIS Hockey at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. Stock was good enough to eventually make it to the East Coast hockey league while PJ went on to the NHL.
Stock has coached his own three children as well as many others in the community. The kids he’s coached in minor hockey have often shown up at his home with fistfuls of change to donate to help “Coach Dean.”
Stock and Paula were high school sweethearts who married and moved to St-Lazare. Stock was a sales rep in the pharmaceutical industry when he started noticing that he was slurring his words. They both chalked it up to repeated head traumas from sports.
What followed has been both a nightmare and a “blessing in disguise,” Paula told the Montreal Gazette in July. She has been heartened by the strong community support that she and Stock and their three young children have enjoyed.
And she was mentally preparing for her husband’s death, even then:
“I refuse to let ALS take five of us,” she said. “I am losing this gem of a man but our kids will flourish.”
Go to steamstock.ca to contribute to the ALS campaign.
