The promise of freshly baked sourdough cinnamon buns and the opportunity to do good in the world attracted more than 125 runners and walkers to Edmonton’s river valley on a recent Saturday morning. The occasion was the Rotary Club of Edmonton Riverview’s second annual Cinnamon Bun Fun Run.
The participants in this August 9 event helped the club raise more than $3,500 for PolioPlus, Rotary International’s campaign to eradicate polio, a highly infectious disease mostly affecting young children.
Polio attacks the nervous system and can lead to spinal and respiratory paralysis and, in some cases, death. Many who survived the disease in the past faced lifelong consequences. Deformed limbs meant they needed leg braces, crutches or wheelchairs, and some needed to use breathing devices like the iron lung, an artificial respirator invented for treatment of polio patients.
Each person who ran or walked five or 10 km, or joined the one km Little Cinnamon Bun Kids Run, received a finisher’s medal and a sourdough cinnamon bun courtesy of Freson Bros. Fresh Market.
Current Rotary Zone 28 End Polio Now Coordinator Jackie Hobal emphasizes the importance of events such as the Cinnamon Bun Fun Run if Rotarians are going to succeed in reaching their goal to make polio the second disease (after smallpox) to be eradicated worldwide.
Zone 28 includes clubs from across Canada, from parts of Michigan and New York state, and from the French Islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
“If we don’t finish what we started, we could see many cases of polio potentially crippling thousands of children,” says Jackie, who is a past Rotary District 5370 governor and a member of the Rotary Club of Edmonton West. “We know from the recent measles outbreak that any virus is just a plane ride away.”
“It’s an honour to be able to make this small contribution for ending polio now,” says event organizer Raemonde Bezenar, the current president of the Rotary Club of Edmonton Riverview,
“We appreciate the support from Freson Bros., and our other sponsors—The Running Room and eBike Edmonton,” she says.
“Thank you also to the Rotarian and other volunteers who helped with this event and all the participants who ran or walked.”
Raemonde also organizes Edmonton’s annual Ice Cream Run in support of the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Society of Canada. In 2022 the society partnered with the Riverview Rotary Club and The Rotary Foundation to provide scholarships that enabled two veterinarians from Africa to earn master’s degrees in wildlife management.
This additional training prepared them to work with wildlife in Africa. One now works in Uganda and the other is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 1985, Rotary International made polio eradication worldwide a top priority. In 1988, Rotary was a founding member of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, with the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund).
Since the launch of Rotary’s PolioPlus campaign, the number of cases has dropped by 99.9 percent. In 1988, approximately 350,000 children in 125 countries were infected annually. Today, there are only a few cases in just two countries. Canada was declared polio-free in 1994.
It is estimated that more than 19 million cases of polio have been averted since the polio eradication initiative was launched.
In 2007, the Gates Foundation came on board, with a commitment to donate $2 for every dollar that comes from Rotary fundraising. With this support, the amount raised from the Cinnamon Bun Fun Run was more than $10,000.
Participants are cheered on by the Polio Moose from the Rotary Club of St. Albert.
After they crossed the finish line, participants were awarded a medal and then they headed to the Freson Bros. tent to pick up their sweet reward: a sour dough cinnamon bun.
