Rwandan-Canadian brings a special passion to Sunday’s Banque Scotia 21K de Montréal

Many runners credit running with saving their lives, but for Yves Sikubwabo, who will race the Banque Scotia 21k de Montreal on Sunday, the true significance of that is something that informs everything he does both in and outside of training.

RELATED: Canadians snag 7 wins at Run Barbados

Sikubwabo lost his parents in the Rwandan genocide when he was only two, and was raised by his mother’s sister, who never told him about his past until he was a 17-year-old about to fly to Moncton to compete at the the 2010 IAAF World Junior Athletics Championships.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvmfDj4hgdT/

Sixteen years after the genocide, ongoing political unrest made it dangerous for Sikubwabo (who is of mixed ethnicity) to return home, and his aunt persuaded him to stay in Canada. He took a bus to Ottawa, alone, with only a little French and no English. His running led to his being taken in by a sympathetic couple, learning English and finishing high school at Glebe Collegiate, and becoming a Canadian citizen in 2015. He then attended the University of Guelph, winning the U Sports Cross Country Championships in 2016, and later transferred to Laval, where he will graduate later this year with a degree in mathematics. In 2017 he successfully defended his title, taking gold for le Rouge et Or.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwCpkOrBi97/

Along the way, he became a runner with impressive personal bests of 1:49.40 in the 800m, 3:43.89 in the 1,500m. Traveling to Kenya to train at altitude a few years ago, he saw that he could make a difference in the lives of young runners there, and started the Running Changed My Life Foundation to support them (it also benefits runners in Rwanda). Last year he built a camp, since some of the runners he met there had nowhere to sleep. He has spent the past three winters training in Iten, Kenya. He has only been back to Rwanda once, in 2015. “What can I say? After five years, I thought things would be different, but now I can no longer go back,” he says.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwWbHNpBGrL/

In January, Sikubwabo took three of the seven wins enjoyed by Canadians at Run Barbados (the mile, the 10K and the half-marathon). And on March 30, he competed at the World Cross Country Championships in Denmark, agreeing with many who claimed the course was the most difficult he has ever encountered. “It was great,” he says. “So good to be there. Honestly, I loved it. Absolutely it was a tough course, sure–toughest I’ve ever run.” He told Canada Running Series how he felt about the opportunity: “I really wanted to have that maple leaf singlet on me because this is the country where I was reborn and that gave me this opportunity. There is nothing I can do to repay all of that, except to go out there and represent Canada with pride.”

In Montreal, Sikubwabo will race against defending champion Tristan Woodfine. In the women’s race, 2015 Pan Am Games marathon bronze medallist Rachel Hannah will square off against 2018 second-place finisher (and Sikuwabo’s Laval teammate) Anne-Marie Comeau.

For the next while, he plans to focus on road racing and improving his 5K and 10K times. Sikubwabo says he does not put pressure on himself to perform well in every race. Regarding the Montreal Half, he says, “I’m ready for it… anything can happen in the race, but it’s always fun to race. No expectation, no pressure, I just go to have fun. Whatever the outcome, you always learn from it.”