Monthly Archives: July 2018

20-years-ago today I was passing by CFB Trenton, east of Toronto.

As our little cavalcade moved along the steel fence that separated the highway from the military base, we could hear the constant roar of giant cargo planes, all painted military green, as they lifted into the air. We could also hear the sound of a large group of young cadets marching in loose formation on the other side if the fence applauding and yelling words of support as Jesse’s Journey continued to head west.

As I waved to say ‘thanks’ to the cadets, I thought about the many different people who had come to the side of the road to support Jesse’s Journey and just how they got there.

There were thousands of people who stopped in cars and trucks. There were people who pulled to the side of the road in vans and motorhomes and transport trucks to donate. There were people who got down from construction equipment, people who climbed off golf carts and people who even came on horseback to donate and to offer words of encouragement. They were what kept me going.

I was really just lucky enough to have the good fortune of being able at the front of the parade a couple of times.

Most people probably don’t realize the size of the team that is required to keep a project like ours moving forward every day.

We actually had two teams. They were appropriately called the Road Team and the Home Team. And both of these teams were managed by women.

On the road, Trish Federkow, who was with us 1995 when I pushed Jesse across Ontario, took charge of the road crew and the road volunteers who usually joined us on a Saturday. The volunteers they were replacing usually left on a Sunday. The new volunteers couldn’t understand why the people they were replacing were often in tears and didn’t want to leave. They would soon find out why.

The new volunteers often looked like they were wondering what they had gotten themselves into. They had less than 24 hours to learn the routine which consisted of a lot of things. Often times they replaced the OPP or RCMP in the monotonous job of driving right behind me at 5 miles per hour. Rule #1 was: do not run over John.

The other things they had to learn in a hurry involved charging lots of walkie-talkie batteries every night, making sure gas and oil levels were always ready to go, seeing that there was plenty of cold water on board the mini vans along with sun screen, clean dry clothing (especially socks) and things like fresh fruit and juice. Staying hydrated was very important. They were also the eyes constantly checking the mirrors and watching behind us because in many parts of Canada there are lots of “wide load” vehicles. That meant I had to move further off the road to be safe whenever these monster trucks came up behind us. Luckily, with CB radios at that time, the trucking world always seemed to know where we were on the highway.

The volunteers also took charge of doing the laundry, making peanut butter and jam sandwiches, collecting money along the road, spray painting the road at the end of the day to mark our start point for the next morning and shuttling people either backward or forward to wherever we were spending the night. Trish was in charge of this group as well as doing the banking and liaising with the home team.

In London, Maureen Golovchenko was in charge of the Home Team. That team looked after finding places for us to stay in advance of our arrival, dealing with media requests and setting up interviews that were often done from the side of the road as we moved along. The team in London also looked after things like signage, sponsorship and co-ordinating events with service clubs, businesses and many other groups who wanted to host us along the road. And most important, every week they looked after co-ordinating and sending us some the best volunteers Canada has ever seen. They were the ones who, after a week on the road in a life-changing experience, were misty eyed and didn’t want to go home. It was “Moe” and the Home Team that paved the way for me to complete 33 kilometres a day, day after day after day.

It must seem like it was a dull and boring routine – and lots of times it was – but none of us ever lost our focus. Everybody on the Road Team and the Home Team was committed to what they were doing – raising money for research so that a day would come when those boys who never played on a hockey team or a baseball team would be able to what I was doing. They would be able to walk.

And so it went on day 106.

Stay tuned. The journey continues…..

20-years-ago today marked my 100th day on the road since I dipped the toes of my running shoes in the Atlantic Ocean in St. John’s, Newfoundland back in April.

I am now in Brockville, Ontario after being in Ottawa a couple of days earlier.

It’s another hot and steamy day at 32 degrees Celsius, no air movement and the humidex hovering around 40 degrees. The temperature coming off the pavement on the highway is now up over 40 degrees which prompted our motor home driver, Ed Coxworthy from Bell Island, Newfoundland to say with his usual Newfoundlander accent, “By the Jesus Johnny, it’s like walking on a stove and breathing soup.”

In the intense heat I found my mind wandering during my time in Ottawa. As my mind drifted, I realized I was having flashbacks to when Jesse and I were in Ottawa three years earlier when we completed our wheel chair push across Ontario.

Former London Knights Brad Marsh and Darryl Sittler had been there to see that Jesse was honoured at centre-ice when the Senators and the Leafs were ready to open a new NHL season. A thrill for a youngster who didn’t skate.

In the House of Commons, it was a great pleasure for me to see all members of parliament rise in a standing ovation to honour Jesse for what he accomplished in raising the focus on the need for medical research in Canada.

Keep in mind this was just six weeks before the Quebec referendum that nearly saw our country ripped apart.

On the road to Belleville I stopped at the 80-watt radio station on the Akwesasne Reserve to do an interview. The announcer, a handsome young man by the name of Ky was a bit nervous but had a great attitude in doing his first live interview. Ky was using a braille typewriter that looked pretty old, but he sure could make it go fast. He was another of those people who helped me find another piece of the puzzle that explains how Canada works. People like Ky are the kind of people who are the fabric of Canada. And it’s a very tight fabric. It has to be a tight fabric when its stretched over six time zones.

I knew it would be a good interview when I walked into the little radio station and Ky said to me “Shake my hand. I’m not weird. I’m just blind.”

And so it went on Day 100.

Stay tuned. The journey continues……

20-years-ago today I started my day in Saint Timothee, Quebec. It was my 92nd day on the road and it would be my final day in province number five. I was walking with my friend Mario Chioini, the 39-year-old French Canadian school teacher from Central Collegiate in London, who spent 21-days guiding us through Quebec as he took charge in conducting all the radio and television interviews in French.

It’s difficult to explain but sometimes in life we meet people we are going to be friends with for the rest of our lives even though we seldom see each other. Mario is one of those people.

He must have thought I was joking when after knowing him for just 21 days, I asked him if he could do me a favour, a really big favour!

The story starts a few days earlier when I was jammed into Montreal traffic at rush hour with transport trucks on both sides of me. The wheels of those trucks were very close to me and it was a bit scary, even though there were police vehicles in front of me and behind me. Over my shoulder I saw a somewhat scruffy looking man, about 40 years old I thought, with a salt-and-pepper beard and carrying a leather satchel, running to catch up to me. I thought he was a reporter, but it turned out that Jean-Luc Robert had come to Canada from France to ask if Jesse would come to Paris to be part of the annual telethon in France. The Association Francaise contra les Myopathies was very impressed with what Jesse had accomplished.

Back on the road when I asked Mario if he could do me a favour, it wasn’t surprising to see the look on his face when I got more specific: “Mario, do you think you could take my wife and son to Paris in December?”

There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered. Mario would have to take a week away from his job as a school teacher. What would his role be in this project? Was Jesse up to making the trip? After talking through a lot of the issues, the trip to Paris was looking like a go.

At the end of the day, Mario had completed his personal challenge, the entire 33-kilometre distance as I stepped into province number 6, Ontario, my home province. It had been a good day.

And so it went on Day 92.

Stay tuned. The journey continues….

PS: In December, Jesse, Sherene and Mario took part in the telethon in Paris. Mario did a wonderful job. Sherene did everything a mom is supposed to do. And Jesse shone, doing everything he could to help research. The telethon raised $116 million dollars.

Twenty-years-ago, Canada Day fell on a Wednesday as I made my way along Highway 132 which hugs the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. The highway winds its way through the villages of Berniere-St-Nicolas, St-Antoine-de-tilly, St-Pierre-les-Becquets and Ste-Angele-de-Laval on route to Montreal. Passing through these villages, the little houses are painted all the colours of the rainbow and they look like they are dozing in the sun, jammed shoulder to shoulder right up to the edge of the road. The smell of wild roses fills the air from the boxes that seem to hang from every window. This has been an amazing stretch of highway where earlier the air was filled with the smell of fresh cut pine from the dozens and dozens of carving shops along Highway 132 in this part of the province. Some of the shops had full life-sized wooden figures of things like a woman with a corn broom and a man smoking a pipe as well as figures of young children and dogs and cats. These shops are packed full of Quebecois history told through the works of the carvers. The highway also makes its way past lots of huge churches filled with gold and red statuary and massive stained-glass windows that, when you are inside, look incredible when they are lit up from the outside as the sun beams down on the multi-coloured glass. Some of these churches date from the early 1600’s shortly after Cartier and Champlain sailed up the St. Lawrence River. While some of the days were summer at its best in Quebec, sometimes the weather turned violent and a little bit scary. Between Sorel and Longueuil, Quebec the early summer sky churned in shades of grey and black. Driving sheets of rain cut visibility to a minimum and jagged bolts of lightning ripped through the dark sky, lighting up the road and, as wet as we were, it forced us to stop and take cover in the safety of one of the escort vans. When the rain finally eased up, our soggy little troupe, with running shoes that now made squishy noises, stepped back onto the road to finish our 33 kilometres for the day. Under that dark sky with the wind howling and torrents of rain there was a silver lining for one of our volunteers.

Ann Hutchison, is a long-time friend whose husband Peter had been there on Day 1 and interviewed me on the steps of City Hall in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Now it was Ann’s turn in the spotlight. It had been raining heavily all day and it seemed like an eternity before we heard the honk from the escort van to let us know we had made our distance of 33 kilometres for the day. When I looked beside me, I saw one of those pictures that no camera can do justice to. It was Ann Hutchison, soaked to the skin, with water dripping from her chin and her hair wet and tangled. She was beaming with a smile that said, “I did it!” Ann, a cancer survivor had just become the first woman to spend an entire day on the road with me, walking the full 33-kilometres and passing her own personal test with flying colours.

We didn’t know it at the time, but Ann would be the only woman to complete that distance on the entire journey.

Who is there on your team that goes that extra distance for someone else? Think back. Think hard. Think about thanking them. It’s never too late to say, ‘thank you.’

And so it went on Day 86.

Stay tuned. The journey continues……