‘Walking for Mental Health’ is an understatement when it comes to the fundraising initiative of a Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care director, who will be on a shared journey across a famed European pilgrimage route starting mid-March.
Steve Parry, vice-chair of the Penetanguishene hospital's board of directors, recently announced his ambition to traverse El Camino de Santiago on a month-long route that will start in France on March 13 and continue until reaching the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
“It basically follows the 1,000-year-old pilgrimage route that’s been walked by up to a half million people a year for millennium,” Parry told Village Media. “It's one of the oldest and most well-trodden pilgrimage routes in the world, currently walked by pretty much somebody from every country in the world every year, and over half a million people.”
Also known simply as ‘the Camino’, legend stated that pilgrimages dated from the 9th Century walked ‘the Way of St. James’ to the cathedral where Apostle Saint James the Great – the patron saint of Spain – was buried.
“You start (at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France) by walking over the Pyrenees, a mountain range, which is called the physical test of the Camino,” Parry explained. “Then you get to the big cathedral at Burgos where El Cid was born. From there you walk across what's known as the meseta — the big plain in the middle of Spain which is very much like our prairies.
"Then you climb into the mountains of Galicia which is close to Santiago de Compostela; that's another mountain range, and back down to the coast.”
Parry, 69, shared that his journey was inspired from a trip from his residence in Tiny Township to Spain five years prior, when he saw a large number of backpackers emerging from the woods on the pilgrimage; and he became enamoured upon his viewing a movie based on the walk called ‘The Way’ starring Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen.
“If you boil it down, they’re basically saying: ‘it's really for my mental health; it's got something to do with what makes me feel right about me when I walk, and this is a place where you go do that,’” Parry said.
“That transition from ‘this is really important for me personally for my mental health’ to ‘I'm a director of a mental health hospital; this is relevant, and this is something that could be an ongoing activity for people who know and work with Waypoint in the future, so why don't I give it a try and see what the interest is’ – to be frank with you – has just been incredible.”
For comparison, in Ontario the rough distance of 1,000 kilometres north of Wyevale is a location called Marathon and it would take about two weeks on paved roads to walk there; likewise for Quebec City or Indianapolis in other directions.
“This got started because I had a heart problem,” Parry admitted. “I went to my doctor, he said: ‘you know what, Steve, you’ve got to walk more’. So I started walking more, and had this completely joyous reaction back out in the woods going long distances – like 20 kilometres at a time.
“All this kind of got mashed together in the idea to go walk the Camino. I’ve been training for six months for this; I'm very able to walk 20-to-30 kilometres a day without killing myself; my doctor says so,” he added with a laugh.
While not going solo – he noted that an old friend would be joining him for the journey – Parry said he would be relying on everything in his 7.7-kilogram (17-pound) backpack, containing one set of all-weather clothes and gear, as well as battery packs for the technology needed to chronicle the adventure.
“You’re going through three mountain ranges and one prairie on route to the ocean. Your weather in March – this is sort of the most interesting month to walk, because you can go from three feet of snow to 30°C in a matter of days. You just don't know,” Parry said.
Footage will be sent daily to his daughter Shannon to be processed and uploaded to various social media accounts, including the ‘Walking for Mental Health’ page on Facebook.
The initiative is intended as a fundraiser for Waypoint initiatives and programs outside the hospital’s normal operations, such as with their ‘mental health first aid’ program.
“Their theme is ‘Waypoint Without Walls’, which is this idea of being present all through the community with all sorts of programs, in addition to their globally-renowned research efforts,” said Parry.
As an incentive for donations, Parry shared that he would be carrying 50 beads called toggles with him. While any donation would be welcome, he said that a $100 donation to the fundraiser would be a claim for one toggle, which would be sent to the recipient upon completion of the journey.
“That’s adding about two pounds to the backpack and they will be well-traveled toggles that will have actually been through the Camino, which I thought was kind of fun,” Parry stated. “Or, if people simply watch the videos and got a sense about this idea about walking for mental health, we think that's a huge win in and of itself.”
Parry shared that upon his return, he would like to see the fundraising initiative become an inspiring event supported by the community and municipalities.
“When I come back, I want this to continue. I may either go and do additional communes in the future – this isn’t like a bucket list thing with me that I do once and that’s it. I would love to be able to have it as an annual event, but I’m also hoping that other people will see this as a worthy thing to do – just for themselves or as a fundraiser – and we'll see this as a community activity that others will get involved in.”
Before returning home to his wife Annie and work, Parry said that he would be taking a short time on the shores of Spain to decompress and reflect on his journey.
A fundraiser set up on the Canada Helps website, ‘Walking for Mental Health: 1000 kilometres on the Camino de Santiago’, had raised more than $3,300 toward the $5,000 goal as of Tuesday afternoon with fundraising concluding on April 30.
