{"id":15021,"date":"2016-08-17T16:58:57","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T20:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15021"},"modified":"2016-08-17T16:58:57","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T20:58:57","slug":"auroran-cycling-across-canada-for-special-olympics-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/auroran-cycling-across-canada-for-special-olympics-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Auroran cycling across Canada for Special Olympics Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte
\n<\/strong>
\nA two-man team has been cycling across Canada for just over a month now, and the 50-day, 4,500-kilometre journey takes Aurora\u2019s Trevor Rice and Ancaster\u2019s Dawson Lucier to Toronto this Friday.<\/p>\n

The MacMaster University students are looking to raise $10,000 for the motionball program of Special Olympics Canada, which works to integrate athletes and supporters across the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amazing work motionball does for the Special Olympics Canada Foundation struck a chord with us for a few different reasons,\u201d said the 21-year old Rice. \u201cDawson initially saw a presentation from motionball reps at a kinesiology conference called Kin Games that was pretty moving. Add that to the fact that we\u2019re both kinesiology students and have always been involved in various team sports growing up, we knew the value and positive impact the participation in team sports have in life and wanted to help. We realized how lucky we were to have had opportunities to participate in team sports from toddlers to university students, and understand that it\u2019s not accessible for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMotionball is an admirable organization that works with the Special Olympics Canada Foundation to ensure that those with intellectual disabilities can have opportunities like the ones Dawson and I had. With our love of sport (especially cycling) and the way motionball brings sport and special athletes together, we couldn\u2019t think of a better way to help the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning in Vancouver on July 3, the pair has made scheduled stops in Kelowna, Calgary, Saskatoon and Winnipeg and are now on the final leg of their journey.<\/p>\n

The idea spawned from a yearning for Lucier to finish what he had started \u2013 all for a good cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cDawson completed a ride from Hamilton to Halifax a few years ago,\u201d said Rice. \u201cAlso, he already had experience in long distance cycling, so the idea kind of came about from him wanting to complete his cross-Canada ride. This in combination with wanting to explore our country made it an easy decision when he asked me if I wanted to join!\u201d<\/p>\n

For Rice, a self-proclaimed \u201coccasional cyclist to campus and back\u201d, he sees the journey as both a philanthropic effort and a physical challenge.
\n\u201cThis is likely something that we take for granted,\u201d said Rice. \u201cAs many people do not get the chance to be involved in things like sport, being a part of something like a team is something everyone should get to experience, and this organization makes this a reality to those who may not otherwise get that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thousands of kilometres later, Rice has earned the moniker of cyclist along with long-time rider Lucier. Rice said his \u201ctraining\u201d was the first leg of the journey, venturing through the mountains in B.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bought my first road bike before the trip, and had time for one test ride before I left, so you could say I\u2019m pretty new to the sport. We actually didn\u2019t do any sort of training before we left, instead we looked at our first few days of riding through B.C. mountains as our training for the trip!\u201d
\nA donation page is set up at www.motionball.com\/bikinghome.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte A two-man team has been cycling across Canada for just over a month now, and the 50-day, 4,500-kilometre journey takes Aurora\u2019s Trevor Rice and Ancaster\u2019s Dawson Lucier to Toronto this Friday. The MacMaster University students are looking to raise $10,000 for the motionball program of Special Olympics Canada, which works to integrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/2016-08-18-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3Uh","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 10:45:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}