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For many, a Thanksgiving long weekend is often marked with a turkey dinner and some pumpkin pie at the dinner table.
But for 14-year-old Evangeline Link, it means a 100-kilometer trek to raise money for at-risk youth.
Starting at just 10 years old, Link has made her annual fundraising walk for Toronto youth charity Covenant House a tradition. Nearly 500 kilometers and over $60,000 later, Link, now 14, completed her fifth and final walk for the charity Monday.
“Today was amazing, I wasn’t as sore as I usually am which is amazing,” she said, standing outside Roy Public House pub in the city’s east end, where she finished her walk surrounded by cheers from family and supporters.
“We actually slept in a tent the night before so I woke up and I’m like ‘omigosh, I survived the night!'”
“I was just so happy to be home,” she said.
Link said she’s stopping her walk after this year to focus on school, but she will still remain involved with Covenant House.
“I’m going into Grade 11 so there’s a lot of stuff happening with school and it’s going to get very busy. This weekend alone I had tons of homework and tests to study for,” she said.
“I wanted to give other kids the opportunities that I had while I [was] growing up.”
WATCH | Evangeline Link on her 100km trek in 2023:
11-year-old walks 100 km to raise money for at-risk youth
Last year — when she was just 10 years old — Evangeline Link walked 91 kilometres to raise money for Covenant House. This year, she’s going even farther: she’s spending her Thanksgiving weekend walking from the Hamilton, Ont., area to Toronto to raise money for at-risk youth.How it started
Link’s first fundraising walk started from her grandparent’s house in Binbrook, near Hamilton, Ont., in 2022. She walked around 100 kilometers in over three days back to her home in Toronto.
“My [fourth grade] teacher did the bike ride to conquer cancer, and I decided I really wanted to do something inspiring too. And I decided I wanted to walk,” she said.
“My parents were like, ‘no way. Not happening.’ But I wore them out and I trained every day and I eventually got to do it.”
The teen’s parents, Ryan and Teresita Link, said they were caught by surprise by their ambitious 10-year-old’s plans but quickly came on board once they saw how dedicated she was.
“At first we were kind of cut off guard by it, being like, oh that’s a long walk and not really possible at 10 years old, but she definitely proved us wrong,” Ryan said.
“At some point you realize that she’s really committed to it, and how can a parent really say no to that?”
Teresita agreed.
“I think that she’s proven she’s a pretty fierce person,” she said.
“She’ll always have her foot in the door of helping other people in some way or another.”
Evangeline Link, right, and her mom Teresita walked through rain over the Thanksgiving long weekend to complete Link’s fifth and final annual fundraising walk for Covenant House. (Teresita Link/Facebook)
Link said that when she first started, there were parts of the hike where she wanted to stop and quit, but she kept reminding herself that “other kids don’t have the opportunities to just stop and give up when they want to.”
Completing the trek over the long weekend meant walking between 27 to 30 kilometers a day. With her final walk now under her belt, Link said she’s raised over $65,000 total, with around $16,000 raised this year alone.
“I feel pretty amazing that I’ve done this for five years in a row and it’s pretty impressive. I just want people to know that no matter how hard it feels you can keep going and we’re always here,” she said.
Tara Defoe, the event manager at Covenant House Toronto, called Link’s accomplishment “absolutely unbelievable.”
The money raised will help Covenant House work to prevent homelessness for at-risk youth and provide programming and supports, Defoe said.
“Evangeline is a person that will change the world some day. Just because she’s got the strength and determination, and this unbelievable compassion and care for the world around her,” she said.