Caribou Legs running for a cause
Gwich’in man treks across Canada for missing and murdered indigenous women
Brad Firth’s mission to get attention for missing and murdered indigenous women starts and ends with one tactic: run.
Firth, a member of the Gwich’in First Nation who also goes by the name Caribou Legs, set out on a cross-Canada run in May with little ceremony, aiming to travel the more than 6,000 kilometres from Vancouver to St. John’s.
Running along the Trans-Canada Highway with no crew and no announcement of his plans, he said RCMP officers stopped him three times before he hit Saskatchewan, mostly prompted by calls from concerned drivers.
“It’s like trying to hitchhike on the Autobahn. You will get picked up,” he said, speaking to the Star from the Saamis Teepee in Medicine Hat, Alta. One of the stops resulted in a court summons over an unpaid ticket. He was issued a promise to appear, but he says he won’t be making that appearance in Calgary, at which point he expects a warrant will go out. Firth is unrepentant.
“If they want to fly me back to Calgary to face it, I’m OK with that,” he said.
The RCMP could not offer details about Firth’s interactions with officers, citing privacy reasons.
This is the fifth time he has trekked across large swaths of the country propelled by goji berries, chia seeds and a cause close to his heart.
But it’s the first time he’s donning full war paint, a breast plate and a drum painted as an aboriginal medicine wheel. He credits the gear for some of the extra attention he’s received — which is exactly the point.
“It’s a main thoroughfare and being painted and dressed like this causes a lot of people to be stirred up. And it’s one way to force reconciliation,” he said. After the stops prompted calls from media outlets, word of Firth and his mission to help missing and murdered women has spread throughout the RCMP, said Sgt. Jack Poitras.
To accommodate Firth’s efforts, the force has assigned him a liaison in the Aboriginal Policing Unit and is sharing his schedule with other provincial forces to keep the interruptions to a minimum.
“We wanted to make sure he had a safe and successful journey,” Poitras said.
During last year’s run, sponsored by the Council of Canadians and dedicated to raising awareness for endangered waterways, Firth ran along an Ottawa highway in rush hour traffic, until he says police asked him to finish out the run on a park trail.
“I can feel a little bit of tension there,” he said. “It bothers me sometimes because it throws me off my game when I get stopped by the RCMP. But they’re just following up with these phone calls from traffic.”
This year’s run to call attention to the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women took on special significance when his sister died last year.
He wears the war paint “as a warrior, as a brother to honour all the sisters out here,” he said.
Firth, 46, said he has had run-ins with the law throughout his life, especially when he was living on the streets of Vancouver’s downtown east side and struggling with addiction.
In fact, it was the police who inspired him to take up running seriously.
“I used to get chased by really fast runners, really fast police officers. And finally, you can never outrun the law. Eventually I was caught and one of the police officers said that I should use my running in a good way,” he said.
From there he joined the Vancouver Falcons Athletic Club through a rehab program and started training for long-distance runs.
Within a few workouts, he was running in the middle of the pack of a group of fairly elite athletes, including some nationally ranked runners, said club coach John Hill.
“I was quite surprised at the talent he had, just kind of raw,” Hill said.
Firth was an athletic kid and sports run in his family.
His aunts Sharon and Shirley Firth were Olympians in cross-country skiing, some of the first indigenous members of Canada’s Olympic team. Despite the legacy, Firth’s old coach says he thinks the runs are as much for the runner as they are about getting attention.
“It’s not like a Terry Fox or a Rick Hansen in the past, where they were setting out on these things,” Hill said. “He just does it quietly. . . . He just kind of wings it.”
On this trek, Firth runs eight hours a day. He has covered more than 1,200 kilometres since setting out from Vancouver on Mother’s Day, with some breaks to visit friends and family along the way. Without any sponsor support, he relies on donations to keep him going.
He hopes to arrive in St. John’s, N.L., by November.