Running changed two Haudenosaunee men in Ontario. Now one of them is headed to the Boston Marathon

On Monday, the Boston Marathon will see 30,000 runners for its 126th race.

Among the thousands will be one Haudenosaunee man running for charity.

Joel Matthew Kennedy, 37, a Bear Clan member of the Oneida Nation, is setting off from his home in Ontario Friday, travelling to Boston for the Easter weekend race. 

It's a goal he can hardly believe he is close to achieving. 

"If someone told me back in 2015 that I would be running marathons at this point I wouldn't believe them, I wouldn't believe myself," the London-based father said. "Even when I started running my five and 10 kilometres, I never thought I would progress to a marathon as fast as I did. I knew at one point, down the road, it would happen but I didn't know it would be that quick."

Kennedy won't be the first Haudenosaunee man to run in Boston. Legendary long-distance runner Tom Longboat, from Six Nations of the Grand River — who twice ran away when attending the former Mohawk Institute Residential School — won the marathon in 1907. 

More than 100 years later, Kennedy is following in his footsteps. 

His own running journey began around 2015, when he was out to improve his health with the desire to prevent diabetes. First he lost nearly 150 pounds. Then he started to run. 

He founded the Indigenous Running Club in 2016 and entered his first marathons. He has now run several, including in Calgary and Chicago. 

"Knowing how overweight I was and how much I changed my life is just overwhelming as a bigger picture," he said recently, before the Boston race.

That "bigger picture" mentality is what pushed Kennedy to make his runs about raising funds for charity. He had COVID-19 in January 2021, and the virus affected his lungs.

"I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to run. Part of what got me through it was praying and thoughts. I remember thinking 'I want to run for more than myself now,' because up to that point I was always focused on improving myself," he said. 

After his recovery from the virus, he went on to run a 50km Ultra Marathon in Calgary in September, 2021, raising funds for Yotuni, a London-based social enterprise that supports Indigenous youth. 

Kennedy's story is one that caught the attention of the Official Charity Program of the Boston Athletics Association, which oversees the applications to run the marathon for a good cause.