Vanguard School Principal Greg Shwaga is putting his best foot forward to battle Huntington's Disease.

The genetic disease that attacks brain cells runs in Shwaga's wife's side of the family, so he's taking it upon himself to trek what he figures to be 676 kilometres across Saskatchewan in an effort to raise funds and awareness.

Shwaga, who will be followed by his daughter in a pilot vehicle, is starting on the border between Provost, Alta. and Macklin, Sask. From there he'll take Highway 14 to Biggar and continue through Saskatoon, onto Humboldt, and eventually continue east toward Yorkton and finish at the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border on Lake of the Prairies.

"I wanted to do Saskatoon because there's quite an active chapter for the Huntington's Society of Canada, and I thought initially that this would help them out in a way," said Shwaga, who is sticking largely to secondary highways. "And the other thing too, I thought about the more-populated routes, either the Yellowhead or the TransCanada, but I actually didn't want to be in too populated area on the highway, for safety and also not to be too much of a distraction on the highway. It works well to go through Saskatoon. And I grew up in the Yorkton area, so it's a place I wanted to end off."

Shwaga - who cites Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope as an inspiration - feels that a lot of people aren't very familiar with Huntington's Disease, so awareness is just as important as money for him.

"I guess the reason for awareness as I go out and talk about it, there aren't a lot of people that know about Huntington's disease," he said. "The people that heard about it maybe don't really know what it is. It does affect I believe one in 7,000 Canadians, and I think one in 1,000 are affected to the point where someone that they know would have Huntington's. Raising awareness would probably be as critical as raising funds for research."

Shwaga started doing extended walks back in late February/early March, and plans to knock off 15 to 20 kilometres a day for the three weeks he estimates the trip will take.

He has a website you can check out at https://igslearn.com/. You can follow his progress on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GregsHDwalkSK/ or on twitter @gshwaga.

Shwaga said people can support him "by way of making donations to the Huntington's Society of Canada. Even following me or retweeting, that gets the message out to a lot more people as well."

And he invites people to stop by and chat if they see his pilot vehicle on the the road.