Photo: Akshay Grover

The marathon is a solo, often solitary event. The intense combination of distance and time makes it almost as hard mentally, as it is physically. In a lot of ways, you run alone.

Kristian Jamieson doesn’t run alone. He runs with a purpose and with a family legacy that inspires every step of every race, every practice, every pre-dawn workout.

Jamieson is an Indigenous marathoner carrying the legacy of Tom Longboat while carving out his own place in Canada’s running story.

On the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, his journey offers a vivid example of how sport, identity, and history can come together to create something even larger than sport.

First Steps

Jamieson grow up as the running kid. Make no mistake, sport was always part of his life growing up, between hockey, baseball, soccer, and basketball. He loved physical education. But running wasn’t a focus until much later.

“Running wasn’t the sole thing I was focused on… I never really even thought about just going out for a run until much later on during COVID time,” he said. “When I first started, the marathon was just about getting it done. Can I run a marathon in X time? Can I just even finish a marathon? Now it’s become down to how fast can I run? How far can we take it? Can we keep crunching the numbers and getting faster and faster every race?”

Like a lot of distance runners, the first few steps are the hardest ones, but they find beauty and purpose in the grind.

A Future Based on Education

Kristian Jamieson doesn’t pick the easy road. In some ways, he leads a double life.

In addition to the commitment, perseverance and natural talent required to compete and win marathons, he also exhibits those same traits as a dental student in his final year of education.

“It’s just super cool to have both avenues in my life. When I’m at school, everybody knows me as the runner. When I’m running and I go to these races, people know me as the dental student – the young man who’s going to be a dentist very, very soon,” he said. “I think the endurance mentally and physically… just having that physical endurance and even mental endurance to be disciplined, to sit there, when it takes two hours or three hours to get a procedure done, we can do that.”

More than just the intellectual challenge and the physical demands of an important healthcare profession, Jamieson dedicates himself to being a role model for young people coming behind him – be it in dentistry or sport.

Family Legacy Fuels the Run

While we’re talking about role models, Tom Longboat has been someone to aspire to for more than 100 years.

An extraordinary athlete, and a trailblazer for Indigenous athletes in Canada Longboat became one of the world’s greatest distance runners in the early 20th century, winning the 1907 Boston Marathon. His career helped challenge stereotypes about Indigenous athletes and established a legacy that continues to resonate in Canadian sport today.

Imagine being a young Indigenous athlete, living on Six Nations of the Grand River reserve just like Tom Longboat, and finding out he was your great-grandfather. But rather than burdening Kristian Jamieson with a family legacy, it inspires him to keep travelling his road through sport.

“There’s no pressure. It’s honestly a privilege and an honor just to have my name in the same sentence as Tom Longboat’s,” Jamieson said. “I was just amazed at just the incredible athletic ability that this young kid had to be able to run those paces in the harsh conditions, unpaved roads, no technology to help him out, no fueling strategy, and just go out there just based on grit, and heart, and raw talent for the sport and be able to be such an elite runner, one of Canada's greatest athletes at the time.”

In addition to inspiration, Longboat’s career has also given Jamieson something to shoot for: his Boston Marathon time of 2:24:24.

“It's given me so much purpose in life and it's really brought me close to my roots, my First Nation culture, and people back home on Six Nations Reserve. I really feel like I am in a unique position to be someone that they can look up to, that they can cheer on.”

Truth and Reconciliation

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is not symbolic for Kristian Jamieson. It is personal.

Members of his family attended residential schools. Tom Longboat himself endured and escaped them. Jamieson feels gratitude for the era he was born into, for the family who nurtured him, for the opportunities he has now. But he also reflects on the ongoing barriers Indigenous children face.

“I think it's just a great time for reflection. As I graduate and get older, there's more things that I would like to do just to be involved,” Jamieson said. If I stayed on Six Nations Reserve, I don't think I would be in this position that I'm in now. I always reflect on that every year, and that's why I'm doing what I can do to get a dental education, to be a role model, and to perhaps potentially provide a way out for some of these students or for some of these kids who sometimes they may feel trapped, they don't know who to turn to.”

Moving Forward

Kristian Jamieson believes the sky is the limit.

He wants to run 2:24. Then faster. He wants to become a dentist who serves his community. He wants to be a role model who opens doors for Indigenous youth.

On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Kristian Jamieson’s story reminds us that healing and progress can take many forms.

Sometimes, they look like a young man running up the Newton Hills, carrying history with him, not as a weight, but as wind at his back.