Making Every Step Count

Running program lifts community in Victoria

Story and Photo By Rumon Carter

In Victoria, B.C., where at last count more than 1,200 people live without permanent housing, the homeless are seen by some as a nuisance, an impediment to business, an eyesore. But to Gillie Easdon, these are not shadows, risks or obstacles – they are people. People who face extraordinary challenges, people to be regarded as equals and – for those enrolled in the Every Step Counts program that she leads – as runners.

Easdon knows first-hand both life’s unexpected challenges and running’s therapeutic effect in facing those challenges. Not a lifelong runner, Easdon, 37, lost her fiancé in an accident in 1999.

Tragedy left her in a very dark place, disconnected from herself and the world. A girlfriend brought her to running, the rhythms of which Easdon says “threw me back into my body and into a calmer mind.”

For Easdon, it was running’s healing qualities and the sense of community it imbues that shaped her love for the sport. 

“And all those things are reflected in Every Step Counts,” she smiles.

“That’s why it works.”

Based on Back On My Feet, a similar program founded in Philadelphia in 2007, the Victoria Foundation, a volunteer organization with a mandate to connect people who care with causes that matter, envisioned a similar program for B.C.’s capital.

The Foundation posted a job description in 2009 that Easdon read as someone asking, “Are you interested in creating something for other people that totally celebrates your core beliefs?” 
There was no question of whether to apply, only how best to build the program. She did so on the basis that running can be a way out of harsher daily realities and into a healthier existence.
Individuals simply show up on any given Tuesday to Friday afternoon, check their troubles at the door, and head out for a walk or run with volunteer leaders, returning to stretching, companionship and a free, nutritious meal.

Around that shared table, Easdon describes her philosophy, based on the compassionate belief that she is “exactly the same as everyone in that room.

I had people support me when my [life] hit the fan.”

So she’s going to pay that support forward, one step at a time, to a special group of people – runners – on the streets of Victoria.


March/April 2011 Issue