While taking part in a Terry Fox Run last fall, Jackson Lepage had an idea.
The École St. Anne School Grade 5 student admired Fox’s commitment to raising funds for cancer research, and wanted to do something similar.
Lepage wasn’t living with cancer like Fox was, but he did have two godparents, both of which were living with multiple sclerosis (MS).
“I thought about my godparents, and I thought, ‘maybe I could walk to raise money for them,’” he said.
He took more inspiration from “The Little Red Wagon,” a movie about a young boy who walks across the United States to try and help the homeless, and began putting a plan into action.
But having an idea was one thing, but getting it off the ground was another. Initially, Lepage wanted to walk across Canada, like Terry Fox. However, his mother Christine and the MS Society of Canada’s Saskatchewan branch convinced him that it would be safer and more practical to walk in Saskatchewan.
Now, he’s planning to raise $4,000 for MS research by walking and biking nearly 400km before his 12th birthday on Nov. 8.
“His original plan was to walk along the highway, and then the MS Society talked him down from that idea,” Christine explained. “After a couple of meetings with the society he decided to do it in smaller treks.”
For the rest of this story, please see the May 10 online or print edition of the Daily Herald.
