The Song of the ING National Capital Marathon

May 30, 2004

Fund-raising with a Difference

Downtown Ottawa was closed to regular gas-dependent vehicles but open to self- sufficient runners on a perfect day for facing the excitement and the pain of the marathon. The National Capital event included a Marathon walk which set out at 6:30 a.m. with 142 participants.

One of the participants, however, stood out on account of a rather unusual, seemingly non-athletic object which he was in the process of hammering? And then after about 100 meters, as his breathing became more regular, he began singing 'Buachaill ó'n Éirne'. What was that strange language in which he was singing? Really, singing and walking? Next was heard a folk song in the language of Quebec. The sound of the tin whistle was heard occasionally.

The Melodious Marathoner, Patrick McLaughlin, creator of walkasong.org finished the 42 kilometer (26 mile) marathon in 6 hours 37 minutes. Not too bad for a sixty-six, going on sixty-seven, year-old participant who sang all the way without ever repeating a song. He was accompanied for about 35 kilometers (22 miles) by a group of participants who joined in the singing and even played the boran, spoons and bones and they all crossed the finish line to the sounds of 'Alouette, gentille alouette'.

This unorthodox 'pied piper' was Patrick McLaughlin, originally from Derry City, Ireland, a resident of Quebec since 1972 when he enrolled at McGill University in Montreal in the post-graduate counseling psychology programme. Currently, Patrick works in the field of Employee Assistance Programme provision in association with Donancy Consultants and is responsible for the Employee Assistance Programme at the Montreal refinery of Petro-Canada.

His purpose in adopting such a different if amusing active participation was to ultimately create funds destined for the building of primary schools on one of the islands of Fiji where his sister, Patricia McLaughlin, a Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, is in charge of operations. The young children in the villages where she hopes to erect these schools have no access to education since the Government do not have the available funds to provide such an amenity. When these young Fijian children, from different cultural and religious groups, are old enough to walk the distance to the nearest school, their education level is already a few years in arrears. The provision of basic education skills at an earlier stage of their development will better prepare them for their life' s journey.

The musical marathon walker sang his way along the route, entertaining the amused onlookers and participants with songs in Gaelic, popular and 'pub' songs from Ireland, songs in French from Quebec and France, songs from England, Wales and Scotland, the Caribbean, the United States and Australia and a few renderings in Hebrew, Arabic, Italian and Spanish.