It has been 114 years since a Métis Hudson's Bay employee, Billy Loutit, ran from Athabaska Landing to Fort Edmonton to deliver the message about an impending flood.
It has been 10 years since his great-granddaughter Shannon Loutitt ran that same trail, bringing soil from his gravesite in Edmonton to Athabasca, and spurring a awe-inspiring commemoration ceremony from the Hudson's Bay Company.
And on July 28 – the 71st anniversary of his death – about 60 of Billy Loutit's descendants are set embark on a journey along the same trail again.
"I could never have imagined it," Shannon Loutitt said. "I could never, in my wildest dreams of my mind ever be able to grasp what has happened along the way, and the people that would be impacted by it."
Loutitt said the idea was inspired to do the run when she heard about the Athabaska Ultra 100 Trail Run, which was set to run July 27-29. She said that at that time, she asked family members if they would like to run it in honour of Billy Loutit and started to help people train for it.
"Ninety-nine per cent of them had never really run before," she said. "So we were getting them ready for different legs of the run that had been prescribed by the Ultra."
Then, in a release dated May 29 and posted on the event’s website, the Athabaska Ultra 100 Trail Run Association board of directors stated the race was cancelled “due to unforeseen circumstances and logistical challenges.”
"I could feel the heartbreak, I guess," said Loutitt, who lives in Saskatchewan. "I could feel that from the community, and my heart broke for them, too. And the same token – these family members that had been training to honour, working hard."
She said it wasn't long afterward that a member of the Athabasca community reached out and asked there was any way the community could help them still do their honour run.
"I swear to you, I just about hit the floor," Loutitt said. "Even right now, it makes me want to cry. Like – are you serious? You guys are in this, and you're reaching out to me and my family and seeing if you could help us?"
Loutitt said she then contacted her family, and everyone was enthusiastic to do the run.
She said the course will be similar to the one she herself did about 10 years ago, from the Alberta Legislature grounds in Edmonton to Athabasca, adding there will be a ceremony in Edmonton.
She also said there is an added bit of symbolism to this run. After the family arrive in Clyde between 5:30-7:30 p.m. July 28, there must be an Athabascan community member running alongside her family until the finish line is reached the next morning.
"We are going to run this side by side with an Athabasca community member," she said. "And that's very symbolic. It's very symbolic for us, that's very symbolic for me, and I think it's very symbolic of this relationship, that your community and my family have had all these years. Together we can. We can do this together. There's just so much that comes out of it when we do."
Friends and family gather at Loutitt’s great-grandmother’s grave to reunite hers and Billy Loutit’s spirit July 20, 2008.
Loutitt's journey
Loutitt said her own personal journey started in February 2004, when a family member found out about Athabasca's Billy Loutit Despatch Triathlon, and through it, learned the story of Billy Loutit.
"For your community to do that and to just see him as a man who was so heroic, and to pass that on (in the name of the race), I can't even tell you how incredible that is, not just as a person but as an Indigenous person," she said. "That's massive.
"And I always say, for me personally, when people are looking for acts of reconciliation or calls to action, or what can we do in this time and place – there's this human aspect that your community has exemplified, that if others just did that, man, our country would be so much further ahead," she added.
Loutitt said that at that time, she did not even know a triathlon was physically possible for a person, but she agreed to do it anyway.
"We had four months," she said. "It began this journey for me that, to this day, I share with people – that when you come from the heart, you can never go wrong."
She won third place that year, and returned in 2005 and raced again.
One year after that, she was running the Boston Marathon commemorating Onondaga man Tom Longboat, who is known as one of Canada's greatest long-distance runners. And in 2008, she was taking the same path her great-grandfather took, running from Fort Edmonton to Athabasca.
Loutitt said she has the utmost love for the community of Athabasca and the people living in it.
"When I made the decision 10 years ago to retrace my grandfather's steps, it was a few weeks after I had done the triathlon for the third time," she said. "My heart and love for that community, of course, just expanded every time that I went out there, and always giving. This community, always giving. I always say, that they, to me, they gave our history back to us, which, there's nothing more priceless. Ever."
A tearful and exhausted Loutitt embraces Bertha Clark-Jones at the riverfront after the run July 19, 2008.
Ultra and triathlon
The Billy Loutit adult triathlon and duathlon were cancelled earlier this year due to logistical and safety concerns with construction along 49th Street and at the Highway 2 and University Drive intersection, although there are plans to bring both races back in 2019.
The Billy Loutit Kids of Steel Triathlon is scheduled to go ahead July 21, as the route for the kids race does not go through any construction areas.
The play
Loutitt also noted that a showing of a play about Billy Loutit would be taking place the day the runners arrive, as well.
Locally written and produced, The Endurance of Billy Loutit is set to run at Athabasca Riverfront Park July 28 and 29. The play – put on by Theatre Athabasca – will also run July 14, 21, 22. Each showing starts at 7:30 p.m. and is free for all to attend with donations being accepted.
“It’s pretty exciting for us to tell his story, this local figure, this local hero,” said director Cheryl Andrews in a previous interview. “Our play takes place from the morning of the water, the ice breaking – and then the flood happening, and then he gets sent to run, and (you) see his journey, the adventure, and getting message to Fort Edmonton.”
