Saanich ultramarathon swimmer switches from breaking records to painting rocks

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Jill's Rocks "Let's take a new project and put your whole heart and soul into it." Adam finds out the story behind an ultra-marathon swimmer who switched from pursing world records to painting hundreds of rocks.

Saanich — The beach had always been a place filled with positive possibilities for Jill, until it became a reminder of the pandemic’s limitations.

“I remember looking [out at the water] and thinking, ‘I wish I could be training right now,’” Jill recalls with a groan. “But I can’t expect people to be in a boat beside me because of social distancing.”

Jill is an ultramarathon swimmer who broke a provincial record a couple years ago by swimming 80 kilometres across the Georgia Straight and back.

Before the pandemic began, she was training to attempt the world record for longest ocean swim — more than 180 kilometres — this summer.

“But then I was holding some stones in my hand,” she recalls. “And I was brainstorming some ideas of what I could do.”

What could the medical office assistant do to make what she’d seen inside the hospital feel better?

“It was eerie just seeing the changes that were happening,” Jill says. “Like walking down these empty hallways that were usually bustling with activity.”

What could she do to recognize all the work being done to prepare for the unprecedented?

“Let’s paint a stone!” Jill thought. “And see how it turns out.”

Jill painted a face on a rock wearing a brightly coloured scrub cap and face mask.

She kept painting her tribute to front-line workers with the same determination she uses to break swimming records.

“I’m not really sure what it says about my social life,” Jill laughs. “But I ended up painting over 300 stones!”

Then she handed them out to 300 people on the frontline, from cleaners to doctors to nurses and cafeteria workers and beyond.

“If it makes somebody smile for a day, that’s perfect,” Jill says. “That’s all I want.”

That may be all she wants for those who she gave the rocks to. But from herself, Jill says she is expecting more.

“Let’s take on a new project,” she remembers thinking. “And put your whole heart and soul into it.”

Jill is in the midst of painting 300 more rocks. Now she’s accepting donations for them as a fundraiser for Canuck Place Child Hospice. It’s the same facility she raised $16,000 for during her last record-breaking swim.

“There’s no point in me doing these big things if I can’t use them as a platform to help,” Jill says.

Proving that — despite that pandemic — the beach remains a place filled with positive possibilities for Jill.

After all, the beach is where she found that stones that sink down have the potential to raise spirits up.