Walk to foster friendship

The annual Know Your Neighbour Day Walk drew about 60 people to Riverside Park on Saturday in a show of friendship and unity.

This year’s walk began with some breakfast near the pier at 11 a.m. followed by a walk out of the park and along the Overlanders Bridge to the Henry Grube Centre and back to Riverside.

The walk, which was started 12 years ago by members of the Kamloops Sikh community, is meant to bridge cultural differences and foster community solidarity.

“This is a uniquely Kamloops initiative," founding member Bill Sundhu told Castanet Kamloops.

"We started it here in 2012 — there was about four or five of us — and it was in the aftermath of a massacre by a white supremacist at a sick temple in Wisconsin."

He noted the need for the walk has only grown over the years with the rise of racism and hate demonstrated by denialism of the abuses of residential schools, MAGA Trumpism and the formation of the anti-hate Black Lives Matter movement. He also noted tragedies such as the shooting in a Quebec City mosque in 2017 and the massacre in London, Ont. in 2021 when a man deliberately drove into a Muslim family of five, killing four people.

“What we feel is this is an important way to bring people together in a friendly community like Kamloops, to get to know your neighbour,” Sundhu said.