Man in Motion to visit Iqaluit

Rick Hansen, in black, does warm-up stretches with a group in Brookfield, Nova Scotia earlier this week. The spinal cord injury activist will be in Iqaluit next week. (PHOTO COURTESY OF RICK HANSEN RELAY)

Twenty-five years after his original Man in Motion world tour, Canadian paralympian and activist Rick Hansen’s latest relay is making its way across the country.

The Rick Hansen 25th anniversary relay will travel through more than 600 communities as it makes its nine-month, 12,000-kilometre journey across Canada before winding down in Vancouver on May 2012.

Although the relay won’t make it to the North, the man in motion will visit Iqaluit next week.

Hansen stops in Iqaluit Sept. 25 and 26 to recognize “those who have made a difference in the lives of others,” said a Sept. 13 press release.

On Sept. 25, he’ll attend a square dance at Nakasuk elementary school at 6:00 p.m.

And on Sept. 26, Hansen will visit Aqsarniit middle school at 9:00 a.m. and finish his visit at Inuksuk high school at 10:30 a.m.

There, he’s expected to award medals to students who have contributed to their community.

While Hansen is in Iqaluit, the relay continues on from Charlottetown, PEI, heading west across the country.

Hansen’s anniversary relay left Cape Spear, Nfld.last month to trace the Canadian segment of the original tour.

But instead of Hansen leading the way, 7,000 participants from across Canada will carry the relay over the next nine months on foot or by wheelchair.

Hansen sustained a spinal cord injury at age 15 that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

He went on to become a successful paralympian.

Inspired by the journey of Terry Fox, Hansen launched his own Man in Motion world tour in 1985, which took him across 34 countries over two years to raise money for spinal cord injury research.

Today, Hansen is president and CEO of the Rick Hansen Foundation, which has generated millions of dollars for research.