Last Saturday afternoon, friend and Royal Canadian Legion Veterans Service Officer Carol Pearcey got a call from a fellow Legionnaire from southwestern Ontario. She hadn’t met the caller, Ken MacKay, but she sensed he needed help. MacKay was 22 days into a solo walkathon to Parliament Hill for fellow veterans.
But (you’ll remember weather turned cold and rainy Saturday afternoon) and MacKay asked for a lift over the last few kilometres to the local Legion for a planned reception. Pearcey obliged and MacKay made it to the Franklin Street branch safe and dry.
“Carol was my guardian angel,” he said. “I’m very grateful.”
On April 26, Canadian army veteran Ken MacKay began an 800-kilometre fundraising and profile-raising walk from Windsor to Ottawa because nearly 10,000 Canadians who’ve served their country in the armed forces now find themselves homeless. Catching his breath and seated downstairs at the Legion with some refreshment, MacKay was invited by Legionnaire Pearcey to explain the reason for his trek.
“I served with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, but I wasn’t deployed overseas. I’ve served here in Canada,” he began. “As a vet, however, I know people who were deployed to Bosnia and Afghanistan. They’ve seen horrific things, and these battles go on and on every night in their heads.”
Such conditions, he went on, have led to some losing their jobs, losing income and becoming homeless. “So, they couch-surf or live in a car or they just bounce around from place to place. … I want to make our government aware that something should be done for homeless veterans.”
In my column a few weeks ago, I described the Homes for Heroes Foundation, a Canadian registered charity that has raised funds and built so-called “tiny-home” communities, or collections of small dwellings no more than 500-square-feet in size. The homes are designed for people who want to live intentionally smaller, simpler lifestyles with stronger social bonds, in other words, vets living near vets.
“Homes for Heroes builds these villages with tiny homes in them,” MacKay said. “Each village has a central area where veterans can get counselling or where they can just gather. Vets will only talk to vets. They won’t just talk to civilians. They’ve already built these villages in Edmonton, Calgary and Kingston. They’re building one in London, Ont., and Winnipeg.”
The 65-year-old MacKay admitted he doesn’t know how or why the idea for this fundraiser came to him at 2 o’clock one morning, “But I’m an avid trekker. I do things called Camino (pilgrimage) walks; I’ve walked in Portugal, Spain and in the mountains of France. So, I figured out how far it was from Windsor to Ottawa and thought why not raise awareness and funds for homeless vets.”
As familiar and comfortable as MacKay feels about trekking long distances, he has discovered a lot about his own province and people’s reaction to walkers with a cause. He’s learned that pickup trucks give him a wide berth on the roads, but dump trucks and young women in high-end cars don’t.
At a farm in Bright, Ont., a dairy farmer gave him a backpack full of cheese sticks for nourishment. Another farmer in Melbourne, Ont., invited MacKay in for a chicken dinner and an easy chair to watch a hockey game on TV. “Within minutes we were both so tired we fell asleep.”
Most Canadians have memories or media awareness of the nature of charity walks from times past. They think of the Terry Fox model in 1980, when the cancer patient trekked from St. John’s to Thunder Bay supported by family and hundreds of other runners accompanying him. MacKay doesn’t consider himself a pied piper on this walk.
“Some people do yoga, gardening or woodworking. But this is where I get my meditation. I prefer to walk alone,” he said.
MacKay admitted that reception has been mixed along the way. Major centres such as St. Thomas and Kitchener paid little attention, he said, “but Uxbridge ranks right up there with the best welcomes I’ve had. I was treated royally by your branch.”
When our Legion branch learned about MacKay’s one-man campaign to walk to Parliament Hill to make the plight of homeless vets more visible, Legionnaires here immediately jumped on board. Royal Canadian Legion, Col. Samuel Sharpe Branch 170 voted unanimously to donate $2,000 to the cause and pay for accommodation overnight.
As she presented the Branch cheque to Ken MacKay, Carol Pearcey captured the power and essence of one man’s efforts and a community’s response “Sometimes superheroes aren’t dressed in capes,” she said. “They’re just ordinary folks.”