Thursday, June 3, 2010

Vision4Hope

Candace Sutherland is a 17 year old Metis girl born in Winnipeg who is currently running across Canada to raise money for  4 charities (Salvation Army,Heart & Stroke Foundation, Canadian Diabetes, and Canadian Cancer Society).  I first heard about her in one of our newspapers in March '10 and was  deeply moved by her story.  She was born in poverty and just when she was about to be taken away by a government agency at the age of 8,  her aunt and uncle came to her assistance and moved to Bissett where her family roots are. Around that time she discovered running and eventually decided she would like to run to raise awareness to what is happening to her people due to poverty. The poverty that exists in our aboriginal populations is disgraceful.  Many communities have no proper sanitation, they are crammed into houses, have poor nutrition, and as a result of this poverty,  TB still exists in  many of these communities.  That a 17 year old girl can recover from her childhood hardships and then run across Canada to help her people absolutely blows me away.

She started her Trans Canada run in March from St. John's Newfoundland with her uncle by her side.  Unfortunately she has not had much media coverage  (why not???),  and now the Quebec police have told her  she is not allowed to run on the  Trans-Canada Highway. This has a familiar ring to it ( Terry Fox experienced problems with running on Quebec highways back in the day).  She is requesting that people write to thegazette.canwest.com to request media coverage for this Quebec portion of her run.  I encourage everyone to check out her Vision4Hope cross Canada run at candacesutherland.com.


"When you run on the earth  and run with the earth, you can run forever".

2 comments:

  1. That is awsome that someone so young has the desire to impact the lives of others in such a way. The media should of hooked their claws into this story and blitzed it like there is no tomorrow, but it is about hope and inspiration and not death and suffering, thus it is not as important. I hope it turns around, and you are correct Terry Fox did have the same issue on his journey thru Quebec, the years flow by but everything stays the same.

    All I can say is Go Candace, there are people out there that are pulling and are proud of you.

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  2. About running on Québec's highway...
    Certainly possible in some locations, but suicidal in Montréal. Back roads are much nicer and closer to people!
    Jérôme

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