Two young men, one Canadian adventure
It’s April 25th, 2010. Jamie Rooney and Ben Morrison awake after arriving in St-John’s, NL at 4:00am the previous day. After a campsite dinner of beans and pasta, they go out to explore the city. They arrive at the historic point where Terry Fox began his famous cross- Canadian trek “just a beautiful little blue building on the St. John’s harbour beside which Terry touched the Atlantic, April 12, 1980, and began to run”; standing there in the footsteps of a legend, Jamie and Ben take a moment to reflect on the journey ahead. The next day they will get on
their bicycles and begin riding through a variety of terrains and climates; next to the rocky cliffs of Newfoundland, along the mighty St-Lawrence River, across the Great Plains of the Prairies and confronting the splendour (and the inclines) of the Rockies they will cross 10 provinces and gain a perspective of Canada that few others have challenged themselves to see. But what inspired two young
men from Waterloo, Ontario to embark on this adventure? Both Jamie and Ben recently
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to the open road’. They decided that they would spend the first part of the year respectively volunteering internationally and working, and when the snow melted they would commence a long cycling adventure. In February
2010, Jamie Rooney returned from Inhambane, Mozambique after spending three months volunteering within the community as part of a Canada World Youth program. During this program, he was part of a group of 18 youth, 9 from across Canada and 9 from Mozambique.
Together, they lived and volunteered three months in Sooke, British Columbia, and then continued their journey for three months in Inhambane. While in Mozambique, Jamie
graduated from different high schools, and although the two met as rivals for their respective schools rugby teams, their friendship has grown since a young age through a mutual love for philosophy, adventure, life… and of course hockey. Wanting to take a unique route after high school, and enthralled by the North American adventure and ethical literature of Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and Henry David Thoreau, the duo chose to take a year off before resuming their future studies to, as Whitman writes, ‘take
worked with his fellow youth volunteers to help repair and revitalize a local park that was primarily used by the orphanage situated across the street. It was because of what he saw, heard and experienced through his work and interaction with the children of Inhambane, that he decided to convince Ben to use their love of cycling to raise money for Canada World Youth and youth-related development projects in Mozambique. Mozambique is a country
that has had many successes in recent years, but still faces an abundance of challenges. Presently, about 44% of the country’s population is between
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