Six Montreal men to run across the country this June

Akshay Grover ran from Montreal to Toronto in 2014, from Montreal to Washington, D.C in 2016 and will run from Montreal to Vancouver, B.C starting June 1, 2018. The run started as a high school project for Grover to raise money for childhood cancer. What began as a two-person mission in 2014, just Grover and his mother, turned into a project that has continued for six years. Terry Fox was the inspiration for Grover’s project and all proceeds go to the Terry Fox Foundation which supports discovery-based cancer research.

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Akshay will be 20 this year, close to the same age Terry Fox was when ran the last kilometres of The Marathon of Hope in 1980. This year the runners leave Montreal on June 1. The team will travel 4, 632 kilometres total, completing 772 kilometres each. For a trek this far, Grover has recruited five other team members: Keiston Herchel, Marc-André Blouin, Matthieu Blouin, Michael Davies and Muhan Patel. The team is looking to raise a minimum of $50,000 for the Terry Fox Foundation.

The Montreal Runners, as the team is called, will be stopping in major Canadian cities to give talks about youth empowerment. You can catch the runners on June 10th in Thunder Bay, Ontario, June 15th in Winnipeg, Manitoba, June 19th in Regina, Saskatchewan and June 26th in Fruitvale, British Columbia.

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Grover says his fondest memories of the project were the moments before completing his first run in 2014. He had a police escort across Eglinton, Ave. in Toronto and his mother following in a support car. Grover says it was a surreal feeling to have completed the journey by himself, and at the young age of 16 to raise money and effect change. The goal of this year’s relay is to honour Terry Fox and show the youth of Canada that they have the power to make a difference.

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You can follow The Montreal Runners through facebook and instagram where the team will be posting daily updates from their trip. The Montreal Runners are also accepting donations here.