Saanich-based swimmer Jill Yoneda managed to raise over $140,000 for Canuck Place Children's Hospice after attempting a record-breaking, 109-kilometre swim across the Strait of Georgia. On Friday, Aug. 9, Yoneda set out for the swim in support of the hospice, which cares for 920 children with life-threatening illnesses, and in memory of her cousin, Joshua, who died from a malignant tumour in his spinal cord.
She said the first stretch of the swim went well and she was actually three hours ahead of schedule, and within a few hours of her swim she had already passed her fundraising goal of $50,000. "The water was warm, it was beautiful, it was calm," she said. "The beginning of the swim was absolutely beautiful.
The first eight hours, couldn't have gone more perfect, and at one point, I was swimming really close to shore, just to stay away from the current. I was swimming over a bed of sand dollars and seashells, and I even dove down to the bottom to pick up a sand dollar for my boat captain." After 15 hours in the water, Yoneda's swim was cut short due to health complications, "but the impact she made was epic nonetheless," noted a release from Canuck Place.
"As night set in, I just felt my chest start to tighten a little bit, and I started coughing. I wasn't too concerned about it, but then as this went on, It was a little bit harder for me to catch my breath," said Yoneda. Her doctor, Kelly Heape, gave her a few puffs of an inhaler and a steroid medication, but as the hours .