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Saanich to Victoria

Day 29 · Scheduled earlier

Bone Marrow Awareness Day — Victoria

Downtown Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria: time to consider the commitment

This day on the route

Planned date
The day
Awareness Day
Planned walking
No planned route miles

Day 29: planned Awareness Day in Victoria, with no planned route miles. Public meeting details and the following ferry arrangements require separate confirmation.

An empty wooden bench sits beneath an evergreen beside a stone harbor wall, with a coil of rope, moored boats and pale waterfront buildings, painted in gouache.
Illustration inspired by Downtown Victoria, British Columbia.

The seventh planned Awareness Day remains in Victoria before the return crossing. The walking miles pause, with time in the itinerary to learn what joining a registry may involve.

The itinerary places a final Canadian Awareness Day between the planned arrival in Victoria and the Coho crossing to Port Angeles. The educational pause comes at a major transition, with the island walking stages behind it in the plan and the Olympic Peninsula ahead.

Canadian Blood Services asks new registrants to complete eligibility questions and consent to joining the registry. A cheek swab supplies information for matching, but the process does not end with mailing an envelope. If a person is selected, further health screening helps confirm that donation remains appropriate for both donor and patient.

That is a commitment worth considering carefully. Readers can use the official information to understand what happens at registration and what may follow later. Jeana’s family experience explains why the foundation raises the subject, while the official information helps each reader consider their own decision.

The planned next stage is a ferry crossing followed by 4.4 walking miles on the Washington side. The route then continues east toward Carlsborg and Blyn, beginning the next chapter on the Olympic Peninsula.

From the road

Spreading the word at Camosun College, and the ferry far off in the distance

It was another beautiful day on the Island. She was scheduled to go to Camosun College’s Interurban campus to take part in a stem cell swabbing event alongside the Lifeline Blood Club and Canadian Blood Services. Canadian Blood Services arranged a blue cab to take her to the campus.

Once there, she had a short Webex call about the finish of the fifth Steps to Marrow walk in Olympia. Then she made her way over to Isla, the club’s president, and the other club members, to help potential stem cell donors join the Canadian Blood Services Stem Cell Registry.

For anyone not familiar with stem cell registries, she explains that in both the U.S. and Canada you can join your national registry with a simple cheek swab, at a live event or online, and that it won’t cost you anything. Go to jadabascomfoundation.org, she says, and you will find a link to the Canadian Blood Services Stem Cell Registry, which is your registry if you live in Canada outside Québec, or to NMDP, the National Marrow Donor Program, if you live in the U.S. Québec has its own registry, run by Héma-Québec, and the site links to that too. And if you don’t live in Canada or the U.S., don’t fret: the Jada Bascom Foundation has links to stem cell registries in countries around the world.

While the club members did the cheek swabs, she offered to talk with folks around the campus, so that they would know the swabbing event was happening in the health building atrium. The swabbing crew reported later that people she had talked to had shown up to have their cheeks swabbed.

The young folks she talked with gave a myriad of responses, from enthusiastic to seriously interested to wanting to learn more. She was grateful to Canadian Blood Services and the Lifeline Blood Club team for inviting the Jada Bascom Foundation to join them in such an exciting event.

Isla told Jeana that it was the fifth Steps to Marrow walk that had inspired her to hold the drive at Camosun College. Her contact at Canadian Blood Services, Ann, had told her that Jeana would be walking through Victoria, Isla explained, so she picked a day for the swabbing event when Jeana would be there.

When she got back to Linda and Paul’s, they went for a walk along the sea. Far off in the distance they could see the ferry coming from Port Angeles to Victoria — the ferry she would be taking the next day. Linda and Paul had extended kind and generous hospitality throughout her time in Victoria, and she was grateful for their warm reception and care.

I found joy walking around the campus on a sunny afternoon talking with young folks about how they can save a life.

Jeana Moore
A white sign with the green crescent Camosun College logo above the words Huber Hall, with a leafy shrub growing over its top edge.A knobbly, round pinkish-red fruit hangs from a long red stem among green and reddening leaves.A white flower with broad, softly ruffled petals and a green button centre ringed with yellow stamens, round buds blurred behind it.A cluster of pinkish-purple flowers with swept-back petals and deep magenta centres rises above dark green leaves marbled with silver.Students gather around a table spread with swab kits and envelopes in a bright concrete-and-timber atrium, while a young woman on the right runs a cheek swab inside her mouth.Seven students smile for the camera around the swab-kit table in the atrium, one young woman on the right holding up her swab.Branches of spiky-lobed leaves frame a view across power lines and treetops to a distant blue mountain range under banks of grey and white cloud.A framed display of four carved wooden discs with Salish designs, titled Salmon Blanket, Four Directions, Blue Jay and Salish Time, each beside a block of text explaining its meaning.Close-up of a white daisy-like flower with a golden-yellow centre, beads of water resting on its petals in bright sunlight.A smiling young man in blue nursing scrubs holds up a pair of barcoded cheek swabs in their paper sleeve, in front of tall windows looking out on a tree and a parking lot.A smiling young woman holds up a cheek swab with its barcode label, seated at a table of swab instructions in front of tall windows overlooking trees and a parking lot.A smiling woman with tattooed arms and hands holds up a cheek swab at a table beside a Canadian Blood Services banner reading Blood, Plasma, Stem Cells, Organs and Tissues.
Show all 16 photos from this dayShow fewer photos
Laughing, a young man in glasses rubs a cheek swab inside his mouth at a table spread with #GetSwabbed leaflets and red-and-teal infinity-logo buttons.The low sun hangs just above a long line of distant hills over a calm sea off Victoria, laying a glittering path of light across the water toward the sunlit rocky shore in the foreground.Low evening sun lights a grassy headland across a small rocky cove, with driftwood scattered on the pebble beach in the foreground, a tall bleached pole standing at the right edge, and distant mountains across the water under a clear blue sky.A band of low cloud lies over the sea at dusk, with jagged mountain peaks rising above it under a pale peach-and-blue sky.
Distance walked
0 miles
Find your official registryDonate to JBFSee every stop

Choose where you live

Continue to the official registry that serves you. It decides eligibility, handles registration and contacts you if you may match a patient.

Where in Canada?

Canada outside Québec — Canadian Blood Services

The Canadian Blood Services Stem Cell Registry asks for people aged 17 to 35 in good general health. You answer eligibility questions online, complete a profile and sign a consent form; a cheek-swab kit arrives in the mail within one to three weeks for you to swab and return. If you live in Québec, you register with Héma-Québec instead. Canadian Blood Services makes the final eligibility decision.

Check the listed age range

Visit Canadian Blood Services

Canadian Blood Services — Stem cell eligibility and registration · checked Sep 1, 2026

Browse all official registry options

Eligibility rules can change. Confirm the current requirements with the official registry before joining.

Give to the Jada Bascom Foundation

Choose a symbolic amount or enter your own in Givebutter. Your donation supports JBF’s work wherever it is needed most.

Sponsoring a mile, a day or a stop is a way of describing a gift to the Jada Bascom Foundation. It does not purchase anything on the route.

$100.00 is a suggested amount. Confirm or change it in Givebutter.

Donate through Givebutter

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Sources

Local history and background reading for this stop.

  1. Stem cell donation eligibility and registration — checked Sep 5, 2026
  2. Join our stem cell registry — checked Sep 5, 2026
  3. Jada, Torsten and the reason for the walk — checked Sep 25, 2026
The flyer: STOP BLOOD CANCER set in tall letters over a dark plum page, a quote, and a QR code beside the words TEXT JADA TO 61474.One standing face of the table tent: the same headline and quote on the left, a large QR code on the right.

Take it off the screen

Print it. Put it where people already stand.

A coffee counter, a church foyer, a break room, a race table. Every sheet carries the code that opens Jeana’s walk, and a number to text for anyone who would rather not scan — no app, no wifi, nothing to hand back.

Everything else for running a drive

Rather be the one at the table?

Host a registration drive at your school, work or place of worship, raise funds, or lend a skill. Tell us what you have in mind and we will help you plan it.

Ways to volunteerHost a registration drive