Skip to content
Jada Bascom Foundation
Donate to JBF
Back to The Marrow Walk

Route update · September 27

The walk now goes through Tsawwassen, and is back on schedule in Victoria

See the route, stop by stop

Saanich to Victoria

Day 28 · Scheduled earlier

Victoria

Inner Harbour, Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria’s harbour and the next crossing

This day on the route

Planned date
The day
Walking
Planned walking
5.8 miles

Day 28: 5.8 planned walking miles to Victoria, back on the original schedule. The next day is the planned Awareness Day; the Port Angeles ferry follows on Day 30. Jeana walked into downtown Victoria on October 3, a day earlier than first planned.

Route overview, not turn-by-turn directions.

Gouache view across blue harbor water toward a domed legislature, with moored boats, a stone quay and a rope-wrapped wooden piling in the foreground.
Illustration inspired by Inner Harbour, Victoria, British Columbia.

The planned 5.8-mile stage reaches Victoria, where the walk is back on its original schedule. The provincial capital ends this island walking section, with an Awareness Day and another ferry still ahead.

Victoria’s city history records the establishment of Fort Victoria in 1843, incorporation in 1862 and its becoming British Columbia’s capital in 1868. The Inner Harbour and provincial government buildings give this end of the island section a clear geographical focus. The walk reaches a capital here before its later planned finish at Washington’s Capitol.

The next water crossing is the Black Ball Ferry Line’s M.V. Coho service between Victoria and Port Angeles. The operator describes a journey of about 90 minutes across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Coho made its first commercial sailing to Victoria in December 1959, giving the route a connection with a long-running passenger and vehicle service.

As first planned, Day 28 carries 5.8 walking miles from Royal Oak. After the change of route through Tsawwassen, this is the day the walk is back on its original schedule. Day 29 remains in Victoria for an Awareness Day; Day 30 crosses to Washington and resumes walking east from Port Angeles. The Olympic Peninsula, Hood Canal and Olympia are still ahead in the plan.

From the road

A latte in the sunshine, and a young policeman keen to join the registry

It was another unbelievably beautiful day in Victoria. Linda and Paul walked the short distance with her to connect her route to their house. They took her along a pathway right on the water’s edge, where the Coho ferry docks among lots of whale-watching boats, large and small.

They stopped for coffee along the way, and Linda and Paul bought her a delicious latte. They were very interesting, well-travelled folks, and she had lots to learn from them.

They had errands to run, so she travelled the high road back to their house, through a famous shopping area on Government Street. Along the way she stopped at Munro’s Books, as Paul had recommended. She enjoyed just browsing, stopping to read this and that as her attention was drawn, inexplicably, to a specific book shelved among hundreds of others. Later Paul told her that the store was named for Alice Munro, the famous Canadian writer, and she admitted that she was not familiar with her work.

On the way back she talked to lots of folks about joining the Canadian Blood Services Stem Cell Registry, and of course she shared the QR code around her neck as well. Two of them stood out in her mind: a young policeman, who was very interested in joining because he already gives blood with Canadian Blood Services, and a woman her own age who wanted a picture with her.

She also ran into a protest at the BC Legislature against the cutting down of old-growth trees. She learned that up-Island there are amazing stands of old-growth forest with no roads to them; they can only be reached by boat or by plane.

Back at Linda and Paul’s, she had lots of work to catch up on: writing her journal entries, making arrangements for the next day’s stem cell swabbing event and recording the contacts she had made. She has a great team of folks helping her stay connected to the people she has met who are interested in supporting donor enrolment in their country.

We sat in the morning sunshine sipping and chatting.

Jeana Moore
A smiling white-haired woman in a high-visibility vest with an NMDP button and a HERO button pinned to it stands on a street corner, with the green-domed BC Legislature and a tall carved totem pole behind her.A man in shorts and sandals and a woman with long blonde hair walking a golden-haired dog stroll the Inner Harbour walkway in long morning shadows, past red flower beds on the right and the Empress hotel across the water.The château-style Empress hotel, its name lettered over the entrance, rises above the harbour seawall under a blue sky crossed by two jet contrails forming an X.A white ship with a red band along the bottom of its hull sits moored behind a long metal gangway on the still Inner Harbour, with an FRS Clipper terminal sign on the left and red and blue construction cranes behind.A sculpture of a leaping whale, covered in colourful broken-tile mosaic, rises from the harbour walkway beside a dock railing, with a red construction crane in the distance.A large stuffed bear figure wearing a red-and-black plaid fleece vest embroidered 'Victoria Canada' stands at a shop entrance.An open book at a page headed 'Introduction' and 'What Is Ikigai?' in large navy letters beside a red circle, above several paragraphs of text about the Japanese idea of ikigai.A quiet street runs down between brick buildings to the blue water of the harbour, ending at a pink two-storey building with a slate mansard roof and distant hills beyond.A large mural on a white building wall shows, inside an oval frame, a red-brown tree trunk arching over striped fields, blue trees and snow-capped mountains.From a railing above the marina, sailboat masts and moored boats lead across the harbour to the green-domed BC Legislature, with red and pink flowers in a planter in the foreground.Beyond a black railing and a pale concrete post, sailboat masts and moored boats fill the marina below the green-domed BC Legislature, its long stone facade and smaller domed towers stretching across under a clear blue sky.Close-up of a bee feeding at the edge of the dark red center of a bright yellow flower ringed with orange stamens, its broad, faintly veined petals filling the frame.
Show all 24 photos from this dayShow fewer photos
Close-up of a bee feeding on the dark red-brown centre of a bright yellow flower ringed with pollen-tipped stamens.A sunlit yellow flower with broad, veined petals and a dark red centre ringed with orange stamens, crossed by thin dry stems.People stroll toward the camera along the Inner Harbour walkway, which leads to the green-domed BC Legislature, past black bollards, a small wooden dock hut and covered harbour boats moored on the right.A frosted-glass panel cut with bold, stylised curving shapes and large eye forms frames a view of a dock gangway, a wooden harbour hut and sailboat masts beyond.An interpretive sign headed 'The History of the lək̓ʷəŋən People', with a line in the lək̓ʷəŋən people's own language above, says they have hunted, fished and gathered here since time immemorial, and that their ancestors lived in large cedar houses.A dark brown horse with white markings on its forehead and nose, in harness and blinkers, waits at the curb hitched to a white carriage, with a water bucket and a feed tub at its feet and red, orange and yellow autumn trees across the street.A rally gathers on the front steps of the BC Legislature, where a large 'Protect Old Growth' banner hangs between loudspeakers and microphone stands, painted placards lean on the steps, and a few people sit and crouch on the lawn.A hand-painted 'Protect Old Growth' banner showing forested mountains stands before the arched main entrance of the BC Legislature, with people, loudspeakers and microphone stands around it.A hand-painted banner reading 'Elders For Ancient Trees' lies across the stone steps of the BC Legislature, with painted placards propped on the stairs behind and people walking past, one filming with a camera.A backlit green leaf glows against a dark background, its fine hairs and network of veins sharply lit.Pale blue-lilac four-petalled flowers sit beside a cluster of tiny star-shaped blue flowers and buds among dark green and purple-tinged leaves.A pink flower with long, drooping white and pink stamens hangs beside a dark-pink bud against a blurred green background.
Distance walked
1.2 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

Donate without the embedded form

Sources

Local history and background reading for this stop.

  1. Victoria’s past, present and future — checked Sep 5, 2026
  2. About Black Ball Ferry Line — checked Sep 5, 2026
The flyer: STOP BLOOD CANCER set in tall letters over a dark plum page, a quote, and a QR code beside a text-to-join line for the U.S.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.Every sheet carries the code that opens Jeana’s walk — nothing to install, nothing to hand back. The number to text printed beside it is for joining NMDP, which registers people who live in the U.S., its territories and the freely associated states. If you live anywhere else, find your country’s registry.

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