NEW GLASGOW - A teenaged girl briefly passed through New Glasgow on Wednesday as part of a run across Canada.
Candace Sutherland, 17, of Winnipeg, Man., is selflessly running across the country to raise money for those in need.
She calls it “Vision4Hope.”
She began running on March 18 in St. John’s N.L., and has now made her way through northern Nova Scotia.
She is running for four different charities – the Salvation Army, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Diabetes Association.
“I am doing it for these four charities because I know people who have been affected by all those things,” said Sutherland. “Everybody knows someone who has been affected by those,” she added.
Sutherland has been running since she was 12 years old and admittedly couldn’t count the number of charity runs she has taken part in or initiated.
“Basically in the past I’ve supported the Salvation Army and those charities because of the causes,” she said.
The socially conscious teen has seen first-hand the effect that poverty and mental illness can have and what it can do to families. She has dedicated her young life to raising awareness for poverty and disease and has been the cause of many donations to charities in Manitoba and now on a national level.
“At my age I've seen so much sadness in the eyes of the children and the eyes of the less fortunate and homeless. I've seen them come to me sick from cancer, diabetes, sick from poverty, sick from heart attacks and strokes,” wrote Sutherland on her website. “I have decided to run across Canada to try to make life easier for people who suffer from these terrible causes.”
She runs 30 to 40 kilometres per day depending on the weather and how she is feeling that day – such a huge run takes endless amounts of energy.
Sutherland estimates that it will be nine to 11 more months until she completes her run far to the west in Vancouver.
A run like this takes a large amount of effort to organize and execute but it also takes a lot of money. Sutherland is asking people to donate to her administrative fund to help her reach her goal of the West Coast.
Anyone wishing to help Sutherland out with a donation may do so right on her website: http://www.candacesutherland.com/index.html, which contains a map where fans and supporters can track her progress across the county.
There are also links to the various charities she is supporting on her website for those wishing to give directly to the various causes.
You can also find Sutherland on Facebook. A link to her Facebook group can be found on her site as well.
