WEBVTT

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Night was falling. We're both
tired. We're limping.

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Hips hurt. Back hurts.
And we keep going.

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My name is Zdravko Ivankovic

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and I'm a sailor third class
at HMCS Star in Hamilton.

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Matthew Pinczak and I, we had
a somewhat inauspicious start.

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We were doing PT at the unit.
We're playing soccer.

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And all of sudden, somebody
runs up and bumps into me. 

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That was Matt.

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Once we got passed that
initial collision of ours,

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it was definitely something
that we could bond over. 

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He was involved
in everything at our unit.

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Where he could do something
and it felt passionate about it,

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he would do that.

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In him, I saw the best
we hope to see in people.

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When I heard Matt passed,
I felt shock.

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The last time I'd seen
him before that, he seemed fine.

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 I felt this void
and we all did at our unit.

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Rucking is a fundamental aspect
of militaries worldwide.

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It's just the simple idea of
you put this weight on your back

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and you carry it
from point A to point B.

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We decided to remember
him in a way

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and I happened
to talk to Chris Bonnell

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who's a Naval Warfare
Officer at our unit,

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and he goes:
"Yeah! It would be cool,

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so we're gonna do it and
we're gonna do it this summer."

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Matt would have
been 31 this year,

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so we decided to carry 31 pounds
of weight plus the other stuff.

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And it was gonna
be 70 kilometres

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from HMCS York in Toronto
to HMCS Star in Hamilton.

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And in the spirit of Matt,
we wanted to give back. 

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97% of the money
that Soldier On raises,

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they send to the causes
that they support.

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So initially, it would have
been just Chris and myself.

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Chris' good friend Joe
saw what we were doing.

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He was really excited about it.

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He's a former service member as
well. And then, my friend Phil.

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At the 20 K mark, old injuries
started to act up,

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so Joe's legs were
in a significant amount of pain

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and Chris' knees were
really acting up.

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We got to about
the 40 kilometres mark

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and that's when Phil and I said:

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"Chris, Joe, we can't have you
go any further."

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So Chris and I's initial
goal was 2000$.

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A thousand from each of us.

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And then, in the end,
we were able to raise 3200$.

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Night was falling. We're both
tired. We're limping. 

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The tears start flowing.

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Everything that... 

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that my friend Matt had been

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and all these goals
that we set out

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for ourselves in this ruck,
they were coming to fruition.

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At 11:09 PM,

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some 19 hours and 97 000 steps,

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we finally reached
our finish line at Star.

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I miss my friend.
Our unit misses him.

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But hopefully, because of who
he was and what he stood for,

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we're all inspired to make more
of the time that we have here. 

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So one quote by Beckett
that stuck with me

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throughout a lot of things and
through many things in my life,

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it's the simple one:

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"I can't go on. I'll go on."