TORONTO, Ontario, July 5, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Thousands of people can say that they have sacrificed their time, energy, and resources for the cause of ending abortion – but very few can say that they have risked being attacked by a bear for it. Mark Pinto is one of that elite team.
As the Canada Crossroads pro-life team continues their long trek across the country, Pinto, one of the team members, took a short break recently to recount the hardships and blessings of the walk at the Toronto Pro-Life Forum on June 24-25.
The conference, sponsored by Campaign Life Coalition, and co-sponsored by LifeSiteNews and Niagara Region Right to Life, hosted an array of speakers, including pro-life prisoner of conscience Linda Gibbons and veteran pro-life journalist and host of Sun News Networks’ show Byline, Brian Lilley.
Click here to view the short YouTube video of Pinto’s address.
“The mountains are the most terrifying place to be at night, by yourself, with animals running around,” Pinto told attendees. “I was scared.”
The walkers follow a 24-hour cycle with two shifts, walking up to 50 kilometers during the day and trying to get as much distance as possible during the night shift.
Sightings of caribou, moose, deer, foxes, and coyotes were a normal occurrence for the walkers throughout their mountain trek. “The first time I heard a coyote,” laughed Pinto, “I prayed the Rosary louder.”
But a long night shift with bear sightings turned out to be the most terrifying for the young man. “There was a bear somewhere around there, a grizzly we were told,” recalled Pinto.
Along with fellow walker, Jacinta Fox, Pinto completed a 5-kilometer trek, during which he prayed to be ready to die that night if they encountered the bear. “Our driver was supposed to pick us up at the 5 km. mark,” said Pinto, “but he fell asleep because he had been driving all week.” The pair continued walking, not realizing they had reached their destination.
“At the end of 15 kilometers on the mountain with avalanche warnings, crazy people driving up and telling us there were bears … our flashlight died and we were ready to call it quits,” said Pinto.
Finally, the walkers were found by their walk leader, Mike Hayden, said Pinto. “He had the bear following him. He had the policy of flashing his light behind just to check if there was anything following him and he said every couple of meters he would turn to look around and he saw a pair of eyes that would walk and stop and then kept going with him for about a couple km.”
“Eventually, I guess it just found him uninteresting or unappealing to eat,” he added, to laughter and applause from his audience.
Pinto requested the prayers of pro-lifers gathered at the forum. “So far,” he said, “the walk has been really good. We ask people for their prayers because not only are there animals running around – they’re creatures of God so it’s all good – but, more importantly, abortion is a spiritual evil rather than a physical evil that we fight.”
More recently the team has battled floods, hordes of mosquitoes, and scorching sun as they trek the vast Canadian prairies.
“We are faced everyday with death at every turn and those who approve it to our faces,” wrote walk leader Mike Hayden in a recent post on the team’s blog. “We see the faces of the women who enter the Abortuary and the looks on their faces as they leave, we see fathers, grandparents, doctors … all as they enter and leave these places of death, we experience first hand the pain and anger that abortion causes to so many thousands as they hurl filth at us as they pass by.”
Hayden adds to Pinto’s plea for prayer, saying it is the answer to the hatred they experience, the answer to the culture of death that they see on their walk.
“It is a spirit of evil that we fight,” Pinto told the Toronto Pro-Life Forum.
He encouraged and welcomed pro-lifers to join the group as they walk through downtown Toronto with their huge pro-life banner on August 1, 2011.
The Crossroads Canada walkers are blogging their adventures here.
Anyone wishing to donate toward the pro-life walkers’ expenses can do so online at www.crossroadswalk.org
by phone at 1-800-353-8817
or by mailing a cheque made out to Crossroads Pro Life to:
Crossroads, Inc.
PO Box 2219
Columbia, MD 21045
USA