Yellowknifer Kira Young is preparing to cycle nearly 1,600 km to raise awareness and funds for juvenile arthritis and rheumatic diseases – and highlight the challenges of travelling for healthcare.
Her planned route will take her from Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife to Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, retracing a journey she has made several times to receive care.
Young, who grew up in Yellowknife, became sick as a teenager. Over three years she had multiple emergency flights south, medical emergencies and weeks in intensive care before being diagnosed with a rare autoinflammatory disease.
The idea for the trip started in 2023, during a hospital stay in Edmonton that lasted about a month.
“I was with my mom but I was away from my brothers, away from my dad, from my health support system back in Yellowknife,” she said.
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Young has been an athlete her whole life, including running and cross-country skiing.
“I loved endurance sports and endurance challenges, and that’s something that I really couldn’t do when I was sick,” she said.
“This project kind-of seemed like a cool intersection … it gave me a little bit of excitement, a little bit of hope that I could turn it into potentially a really empowering project, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do now, kind-of reclaim that distance.”
Though she’s more of a runner and skier than a biker, neither of those sports are super conducive to covering the distance, she said. “So I’m getting into cycling.”
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She plans to make the trip over 10 days in June. Two friends will cycle with her: Ella Kokelj, who she grew up with in Yellowknife, and Sofia Sikka-Patel, a friend from university. Her dad and brothers will join for a bit at the start and end, she said, and her mom will drive with them. The group will camp and stay in hotels along the way.
Her goal is to raise $50,000 for the charity Cassie and Friends, a society that supports children with juvenile arthritis and other rheumatic diseases.
She’s also hoping to raise awareness about paediatric rheumatic diseases, which affect more than 25,000 kids in Canada.
“It’s not a word that many people know. Most people know what arthritis is, but that’s really only a very small part of what it means to have rheumatic disease,” she said.
The trip is personally symbolic for her and also symbolic of the distance many people, including youth, have to cover from the North to access healthcare, Young said.
“The journey from Yellowknife to Edmonton is really long, but it’s even longer if you have to come from a smaller community in the North,” she said.
“It’s not just the expense of getting to Edmonton and the time away from work. It’s taxing on relationships, employment, school, jobs.”
According to the NWT Medical Travel Services Annual Report, released last month, there’s a “rising demand for scheduled medical travel and continued high use of emergency travel.”
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From the 2022-23 to 2024-25 reporting periods, total medical travel cases increased from 17,478 to 23,004.
“I think most of the country is not really familiar with that even though it affects so many people,” Young said.
“It really is just huge for so many people. I hope I’ll be able to bring a little bit of awareness to that.”
You can follow Young’s journey online through the Raisin donation platform.
