Raise a Reader (Herald Article)

Where in the world is Yasmin John Thorpe?

By KEELY COVO/Special to The Herald

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

During September and October, Penticton‘s Yasmin John Thorpe will be trekking

across Northern Spain to raise money for Raise a Reader.

Her route is 780 kilometres – 30 km less than driving from Penticton to Edmonton

– and she hopes to complete it in 40 days.

John Thorpe just turned 60, and that was a big part of what inspired her

pilgrimage.

“It‘s the one big thing I want to do from my bucket list,” she said. “I feel good and

I wanted to do something strenuous.”

The added pressure of doing it for a cause will hopefully give her the push she

will need when the journey gets tough, she said.

John Thorpe has visited several schools in the Okanagan, and she hopes that

students from every one of those schools will help her now raise money for Raise

a Reader.

She plans to write to the schools, suggesting that the principals keep a can on

their desks so that, every morning, kids can drop in a few pennies or whatever

change they have.

Students and volunteers will also hawk newspapers on the morning of Sept. 29

as the primary Raise a Reader fundraiser.

For her part, John Thorpe is donating a dollar for every kilometre of her trek. She

said she will give it in advance, just in case something happens and she doesn‘t

complete all 780 clicks.

However, John Thorpe would like more than just change from kids. She said

she‘ll need lots of encouraging messages on her blog, which she will update

every night from Internet cafes along the way.

“I‘m sure I‘m going to question myself after the third or fourth day,” she said.

“That‘s when I‘ll need encouragement and motivation.”

For a year now, John Thorpe has been training herself for this pilgrimage, called

the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, starting in St. Jean-Pied-de-Port in

France.

She is up to 18 km a day. By the time she goes, she‘ll be at 23 km a day. Once in

Spain, her stages can vary from as short as 19 km to as long as 39 km.

Through training, John Thorpe met a young woman who had done the same

pilgrimage before. The young woman offered many words of advice, as well as a

scallop shell that travellers attach to their backpacks to identify them as pilgrims

to Spanish separatists.

What she finds especially interesting is how many people have travelled the

same path. The shell that she has may have been on this journey several times

before. She said tens of thousands of people do this pilgrimage every year.

It is named after Saint James, an apostle who travelled it trying to convert people

to Christianity, and it has a deep spiritual and religious effect on many who travel

it.

“They say the journey changes you,” John Thorpe said. “That‘s what I‘m looking

for in my life. I‘m looking for some sort of spiritual change.”

Her blog site isn‘t set up yet, but the Herald will publish it on the first day of John

Thorpe‘s trek, which will be 19 km over the Pyrenees Mountains.