A Port Moody senior is taking a walk to raise money for kids in the burn unit at BC Children's Hospital.
But it's not just any walk. Louis Charland will leave on Sept. 14 for Spain, where he plans to walk 300 miles on the El Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James.
"When I heard about it I thought it sounded adventurous, romantic," said the 73-year-old. That was back in early spring and since March, Charland has worked up from walking just a couple of kilometres a day to as many as 25 km.
But it hasn't been easy.
"I've always been pretty fit," said the tall, lanky retiree whose main transportation is his bicycle. "But walking uses entirely different muscles. I was surprised at how little I could walk at first."
All the hard work has paid off, however, and Charland figures he's lost about 25 pounds in the last five months and expects to log about 16 km per day on the 30-day pilgrimage.
An adventurous soul - he's has logged thousands of miles traveling and, in his working life, managed a company that manufactures underwater cameras - Charland is looking forward to meeting fellow pilgrims along the centuries-old route.
"Meeting people who are in transit are different people, they're interesting and they give you a lot in terms of their experiences," Charland said.
It was in researching the trip, and discovering just how challenging it was likely to be, that Charland connected a sense of atonement and suffering to the walk, which ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.
"You have to suffer when you're atoning and I linked that to helping somebody," Charland explained. A father of two grown children, Charland was eager to raise funds that would go towards helping sick kids.
So far he's raised $1,200 and hopes to make his goal of $5,000, all of which will be donated to the BC Children's Hospital burn unit.
To find out more information and follow Charland's progress along the trek, visit louischarland.blogspot.ca and, to donate, email [email protected] for a link to his BC Children's Hospital donation page.
