Twelve miles down the peninsula into an ordinary Saanich suburb

The Saanich Peninsula narrows as it runs south, and the walk narrows with it — out of a seaside town, past farmland, and into the suburbs that ring Victoria. The region's walking spine is the Capital Regional District's Lochside Regional Trail, 29 kilometres of former railway line running from Swartz Bay through North Saanich, Sidney, Central Saanich and Saanich into Victoria. Some of it is off-road and scenic; some of it shares paved or gravel public roads with cars and farm vehicles, which is the part a long-distance walker has to plan around.

Royal Oak is one of the District of Saanich's named local areas, made up of the Broadmead, Falaise and Viewmont neighbourhoods. It has a transit exchange, a shopping centre, and Saanich Commonwealth Place, a District of Saanich aquatic and recreation centre at 4636 Elk Lake Drive. It is a place people live in rather than visit.

That ordinariness is the reason to write it down. Joining the Canadian registry is mostly something done from home: you complete an eligibility questionnaire and consent form online with Canadian Blood Services, a buccal (cheek) swab kit reaches you in the mail within one to three weeks, and you post it back in a prepaid envelope to be HLA typed. So the registry gets assembled in places exactly like Royal Oak, by people who will most likely never be called, for patients they will never meet. Fewer than a quarter of patients find their match inside their own family. Everyone else is waiting on a stranger.