Forty days and 17.8 million steps later, St. Albert's Bertha Kennedy students have returned home. Not that they ever left.
St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse and Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgeber led about 250 Bertha Kennedy Elementary students on a stroll Monday to finish the school's Walk Across Canada event.
Meant to encourage youth fitness, the event saw students wear pedometers to try to walk the equivalent distance from Cape Spear, N.L., to St. Albert before the end of the school year on Wednesday. The students had about 42 days to walk some 6,145 kilometres, 12.29 million steps.
The school actually reached its goal around mid-June, says teacher and project co-ordinator Dolores Andressen, but decided to push on for the coast instead of stopping. "It's a trek across Canada and we thought, 'We're leaving out British Columbia.'"
The students ended up walking about 17.84 million steps (8,920 kilometres), Andressen says, travelling from Newfoundland to Victoria, B.C., and back to St. Albert as they walked roughly parallel to the Canada-U.S. border.
Pedometer power
This fitness campaign was a part of the school's Healthy BobKats initiative, says teacher Cathy Traynor. (The bobcat is the school's mascot.) Students strapped on pedometers on May 17 to track the number of steps they took each day and marked their collective progress on a map.
Students went on neighbourhood walks during gym class to boost their step counts, Andressen says, and also held field trips and a triathlon. Staff members also kicked their own exercise regimes up a notch.
Crouse, who helped kick off the walk in May, says he's worn his pedometer every day since May 17 and has racked up about 270,700 steps.
"What surprises me is how many steps in a day that I take," he says. Adults are supposed to take about 10,000 steps a day to stay healthy, he notes, and he found he was usually 3,000 short unless he did extra exercise.
Statistics Canada says children should get at least 60 minutes of sweat-inducing activity a day to stay healthy, equivalent to about 13,500 steps. Just seven per cent of Canadian kids meet this standard, the agency found.
Canada has a fitness deficit, Rathgeber says, one that's contributing to obesity, diabetes and strokes in adults. If we can get kids fit, he says, we can hopefully get parents moving too, reducing health care costs.
He praised the school's efforts to get fit, especially since it also taught students more about Canada. "Most Canadians don't appreciate how big our country is."
Walking is a no-cost form of exercise that can easily be added into your day, Traynor says. "The thing that's wonderful about walking is that anyone can do it."
Pedometers are a great way to stay motivated while walking, Andressen says, as they help you track your progress. "The children loved to have the pedometers. They really liked it as a little gadget."
Grade 6 student Mathew Graham, who was the Canadian flag-bearer during the Monday walk, says he does about two hours of exercise a day.
"I take my dog for a walk. I go biking with my friends."
Today's kids aren't as healthy as those of generations past, he adds. "We need to step up our game and get healthy."
The kids will get to keep their pedometers, Andressen says, but she's not sure if the school will do this cross-country tour again.
"Somebody said [to do] North America. Somebody said the territories have been left out. Who knows where it will take us?"
