This year’s Terry Fox run is on Sept.15. It promotes messages of hope, unity, community involvement and courage. Canadians across the country, indeed the globe, join together to honour his courage to fight cancer with a five-kilometre run or walk.
Fox lost a leg to osteogenic sarcoma. The B.C. native began his Marathon of Hope on April 12, 1980, after filling a bottle with Atlantic Ocean water at Signal Hill in St. John’s, N.L. The intention was to symbolically unite the country by pouring that water into the Pacific.
But his marathon-a-day run ended Sept. 1 near Thunder Bay, Ont., after 5,373 kilometres. This time cancer was found in his lungs. He died the following year.
About 600 communities across Canada took part in last Sunday’s 44th annual run. This is celebrated in many elementary and high schools but the conversation or participation in this run fades for many.
I remember participating in the Terry Fox run throughout elementary and high school but did not hear much more about it after almost as if it was forgotten despite the awareness and run still being crucial.
Trisha MacNeill, a breast cancer survivor, said she is old enough to remember Fox running, seeing updates on the news and will never forget the heart, courage and determination he put into his cause.
“I remember feeling scared for him and when I got the news of my own diagnosis not knowing for six months what was going to happen in my other breast. I had to face the fear of dying,” MacNeill said.
“I think cancer is an experience no one forgets. It changes your perspective on life and how you want to live it,” she said. “He didn’t waste what time he had left, he made it count. It’s hard not to find him inspiring even now.”
Everyone is affected by cancer in some way or another. If someone has not experienced it, they usually know someone who did.
The Canadian Cancer Society reported that every two in five Canadians are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
Carolyn Gotay, emeritus professor of population and public health at the University of British Columbia (UBC), said Fox opened the door to a greater understanding and conversations about cancer.
“At the time Terry Fox started his historic run, the word cancer was not even spoken by many Canadians, with terms like tumour used instead, and cancer was seen as an inevitable death sentence,” Gotay said.
The runs raise cancer awareness and act as a reminder to persevere, a message especially relevant for students.
The 2023-2024 Terry Fox Impact Report said $43.9 million was invested in cancer research.
Wendy Fric, the director of school runs for TFF, said fundraising is low among post-secondary students because they don’t have much money.
“I think the greatest success would be to invite the community because even if kids are on a budget, they can still create fundraising pages, they can still reach out to their community of friends and family to support their pages,” Fric said.
“Terry’s character traits really need to live on, even at that age level [of post-secondary students],” she said.
Fric said schools can register with TFF to receive promotional materials for any Fox-related event, be it a walk, selling t-shirts, or screening a movie about Fox.
Frank Cappadocia, Humber Polytechnic’s dean of continuous professional learning (CPL), is an active promoter in the Terry Fox Foundation (TFF) and a participant in the run.
“The foundation’s done a great job on the secondary side and they do have to begin to bridge that into post-sec, and the research stuff that they do is also not talked about a lot,” Cappadocia said.
“In post-secondary, especially now with Humber being a polytechnic, we also do a tremendous amount of research and this is an area we could partner with them more overtly on,” he said.
Second-year sports event management students organized the first-ever Humber World Cup in 2022, featuring TFF chair Michael Rossi, who gave inspiring advice during the half-time show, with proceeds going to the Terry Fox Foundation.
Cappadocia intends to promote Fox this year and has plans to introduce an annual head-shaving event at Humber next year, similar to those he organized at York and Lakehead Universities.
This is all a step in the right direction and it would be amazing if a Terry Fox run could come to Humber and other post-secondary institutions.
