GRAVENHURST, ON – The fourth annual organ donor swim front crawled its way across Lake Muskoka yesterday.
The swim was created to shine a light on organ donation in Canada and was spearheaded by Ricky Jacobs, whose father is awaiting a kidney transplant.
Grey Brett and Jillian Best, a pair of athletes participating for Team Canada in the World Transplant Games were part of the six swimmer relay team.
“This year’s #OrganDonorSwim hopes to raise awareness about presumed consent, or opt-out, a model for organ donation that was recently adopted in Nova Scotia, and is being proposed for Ontario,” said Jacobs. “We believe that an ‘opt-out’ program for Ontario will help remove the wait times that are so critical to organ transplants.”Â
Swimmers took turns to cross from Gravenhurst to Port Carling, a 30-kilometre distance doing a kilometre at a time. By the end of the day, each swimmer had covered approximately five kilometres over through the course of the day.
The previous three years have seen some $65,000 raised to help send kids with transplants to a summer camp experience at Camp Kivita in Muskoka.
