I hope that everyone will be able to make it to our class meeting, even with its move to MONDAY MORNING this week. I am especially looking forward to this meeting because we will be joined by special guest and Dvision 3 alumnus, Roshen Jaswal, who was in grade 6 when he was last a student in our room. Roshen has kindly kept in touch over the years since and has agreed to join us to share some memories and a little of his story of what life has been like for him after surviving Division 3.

As you continue working on various activities (some new and some extending from last week), I also want to draw your attention to a couple of stories that I have come across in the news this week about two of the most notable and most inspiring individuals from our province who set out to bring attention to how we can overcome our own challenges and can help improve the lives of others when we join together.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope. You may have heard how Addidas, the company who helped sponsor Terry’s run 40 years ago by providing him with shoes (he needed a lot of shoes!) released a special, limited edition shoe last week modelled after the runners Terry wore with all proceeds going to the Terry Fox Foundation. The shoes sold out online in mere minutes. These photos tell the story well, check them out.

Rick Hanson is marking the 35th anniversary of his Man in Motion tour (when he travelled all the way around the world in his wheelchair to raise funds and awareness for accessibility and spinal cord injury research) by donating almost 2000 pieces of memorabilia from his tour to the Canadian History Museum. In his interview with CBC’s On the Coast, Rick talks about memories of the tour, his friendship with Terry Fox and their wheelchair basketball games together and how he carried a small statue of Terry with him on his tour to help him maintain his spirits and determination.

As we continue working through our current situation and conquering all our collective and individual obstacles, I hope we might be once again inspired by these individuals, and maybe not just because their challenges and their successes seem so great (which they were and are) but because their determination and ultimately their success came out of the desire to do good for others. We CAN get there faster if we all move together.