The Aurora residents are set to leave the city on foot on the morning of August 13, travelling Yonge Street, spending the night at home, and continuing their trek the next day to Barrie City Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEveryone has a birthday, but George has chosen to have a reverse birthday by giving to others,\u201d says Allison Stuart, Board Chair of the Aurora Food Pantry. \u201cHe is going to walk from Toronto to Barrie and is encouraging his family and friends to celebrate his birthday walk by making donations to the Pantry. This amazing gesture will put food on the tables of our clients during these challenging times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While a walk from the foot of Toronto to Barrie City Hall might seem daunting to the average person, regardless of age, George and Erlinda Biondic are not your ordinary people. Since their retirement, they have dedicated themselves to physical fitness and running, each racking up several Canadian and International records in their age brackets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
George\u2019s family were refugees from former Yugoslavia and Erlinda immigrated to Canada from the Philippines. Like so many other refugees and immigrants, they came to Canada for a better life. Although they can understand firsthand the struggles that families face when starting over in a new country, they know that a better life is possible with the help and support of their neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe way the economy is, people are going around hungry even in this wealthy nation of ours,\u201d says George. \u201cThere\u2019s a real need here and we thought that if we could combine [our love of running with] addressing a real need, it was time to do something a little wild for my birthday and do something beyond us. It\u2019s benefiting our backyard of Aurora\u2026and our community where we have been living since 1993. We feel lucky to be here and we can\u2019t think of a better place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aurora is also a great place to be when considering this lengthy walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the GO line, they plan on taking the train down to Union Station ahead of the trip \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re trying to do our little bit for climate change,\u201d says George \u2013 and taking it back to Aurora once they complete their mission at Barrie City Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They scoped out the route by car, however, just a few weeks ago to make sure everything was in order and, most importantly, doable, and they\u2019re looking forward to making a difference in the local community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t the first time they\u2019ve put their feet down on the road for a good cause. Several years ago, they travelled from the east coast of Canada with a group, bound for Ontario, to raise awareness and funds for Canada\u2019s Paralympians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this time it is decidedly a couple\u2019s effort for the Food Pantry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t had any children so our life after we retired was looking around for something to do,\u201d says George. \u201cFor me, and for years, it was ultra-running and around six years ago Erlinda said, \u2018Well, why can\u2019t I do one of these races?\u2019 She came out and did her first race, which was a three-day race and got a whole bunch of Canadian age records and she was having so much fun, did some more, got more records, and all this came out of the blue. Most often people say when you hit 65 it is time to sit back, do nothing, and your best years are behind you. I feel that the best years of your life don\u2019t have to be before 65. Erlinda is clear evidence of that because I would say probably some of the finest years in her life have been since she turned 65 and it has now been 17 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLife has its opportunities. It doesn\u2019t have to end at 65 and no matter what your situation may be \u2013 socio-economically, physically \u2013 and no matter how bleak things may look, things can turn around. I guess that\u2019s kind of the message in this walk and in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To contribute to George and Erlinda\u2019s fundraising walk benefiting the Aurora Food Pantry, visit aurorafoodpantry.ca, click DONATE, and select \u201cGeorge Biondic\u2019s 70th<\/sup> Birthday Walk\u201d from the drop-down menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe summer is a challenging time at the Pantry as donations are down and families are seeking more help as children are home during the day,\u201d says Ms. Stuart. \u201cUnanticipated generosity such as George\u2019s appeal to family and friends to donate to the Aurora Food Pantry in celebration of his birthday walk allow us to provide an extra boost to our clients\u2019 grocery hampers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Brock Weir .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31725","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\/2022\/08\/2002-08-04-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8fH","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 05:57:40","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\/31725","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=31725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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