Guy Amalfitano's Crossing of Hope

I arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan about two weeks ago, taking 5 days to get here from Kitchener. The first day, I drove to Sault Ste. Marie (stopping at the beach in Parry Sound along the way) and tried Couchsurfing for the first time! The second day is hands-down the best day of driving– between Sault Ste.-Marie and Thunder Bay, along the shore of Lake Superior, through house of provincial park where you can go for quite a while without seeing a single other car. About 40 km outside of Wawa, Ontario (home of the Wawa giant goose; or rather, the lineage of Wawa giant geese) I started thinking about Terry Fox. Terry Fox looms large in the collective consciousness of all Canadians, but particularly those in provinces he actually made it through; and it’s hard to watch the pavement whizzing by underneath your car without imagining what it would have looked like from the perspective of a lopsided jog. Just as I was contemplating this, I saw a man by the side of the road in athletic clothing. And crutches. With one leg. Running.  Did I hallucinate him? Where was he going? Who was he? I didn’t see any other vehicles around him, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything– I was in the middle of a park, but there were campsites fairly nearby, and a few small on either side of the large parkland. I considered turning around to go talk to hum, but by the time the thought appeared in my mind, it would have been impractical. He certainly didn’t seem to be in distress, so I figured it would remain forever a mystery, and filed the anecdote away to relate to the friends I was staying with in Thunder Bay that evening. Well, just as I was typing this up, I hopped over to read the news from Northwestern Ontario. And lo and behold, an answer: Guy Amalfitano, a French cancer survivor who watched the Marathon of Hope on TV from his hospital bed as a teenager, arrived in Thunder Bay last week. According to the itinerary on his website, he is planning to arrive in Regina on the 24th of September, and to finish his journey on the 6th of November.