Terry Fox

There are few things in life so inarguably good that no one person dares to question it. In spite of it all, there are people who - believe it or not - don't like the taste of chocolate, my mother being one of them. I'm sure there are some sick freaks out there that don't like fields of lilacs - likely the allergic or those riddled with agoraphobia. There are even some that dare say Electric Six isn't the greatest band from the late nineties to now, despite the appearances of Surge Joebot, Frank Lloyd Bonaventure and Dr. Blacklips Hoffman throughout their history. Terry Fox, however, is one of such precious few exceptions to this rule. If you have an ounce of Canadian blood in you, his name alone should cause it to stand at attention and salute.

Repeating the basic life story as a beginner summary seems somewhat pointless here considering the vast majority of my admittedly small audience would be Canadian, already familiar with his life. Nevertheless, I'll give you the basics. Fox was diagnosed with cancer at a young age, and decided to run across Canada with one leg to raise money for research against the disease under the name the Marathon of Hope. His determination, selflessness and sheer force of will has been an inspiration, and a point of pride for Canadians as a whole.

Fox struggled with boredom

on his runs as the iPod has not yet

been invented.

Terry Fox's early life reads something akin to a low-budget family channel movie; a child described as short, weak and an overall terrible sportsman shows up to every practice, first to arrive and last to leave. In spite of a lack of inherent physical ability, he becomes a solid basketball player through little more than sheer determination and good ol' fashioned hard work, becoming the captain of his high school team by his grade twelve year. It makes you wonder if this is one of those mythologized aspects of someone's life that is said post-mortem in order to further a message - in this case Terry's unbreakable spirit. The whole story is so gosh darn inspirational you must think he had a perpetual tape of "Gonna Fly Now" playing in his head, living his life through a series of montages.

Fox began to notice a severe pain in his knee (which he had dismissed for quite some time in order to continue playing basketball) which turned out to be cancerous. At the age of eighteen, he had his right leg amputated. Recovering in a ward with a number of children, all struck by cancer themselves, Terry came to the terrible realization that they lacked hope. He then set out to give those children something to root for, deciding he would run across Canada, battered by cancer, his heart damaged by chemotherapy and equipped with a prosthetic leg that forced him to run with a limp that is certainly familiar to the entirety of the country. With the help of a close childhood friend, he began his run with the hope of raising money along the way.

Fox reminds us that no matter what we're
doing, we can always do it with a heck
of a lot more effort.

The beginnings of his race, starting in St. John's, began with minimal media attention and a feeling of futility that would easily have stopped many of those in his position. He travelled through town after town, but lacking public knowledge and organization, he raised very little money - or "scrilla" as my younger readers may be more familiar with. The greatest disappointment in earnings came from (surprise surprise) Quebec, where I can assume a general distaste for contributing to causes not associated with foolish pledges for separatism caused hardly a penny to come Terry's way. You could only imagine the discouragement in the whole ordeal - training tremendously for this event, earning little, and moving a marathon a day with one leg and finding precious little to show for it. People would ask him what he was doing and offering rides (really just a way of showing him they had no idea who he was or what he was doing) and once or twice someone tried to run him off the road, making the person who attempted the act collectively remembered by Canadians as "that nameless lowlife".

Fortunately, the tide was about to change through the addition of a public relations guy that would move ahead of Terry, hit his destinations and raise some awareness with the help of local news stations and this new fangled technology, the television. Suddenly, and seemingly very quickly, Terry Fox became a renowned name. Donations came in much more freely, there would be people waiting to greet him, invitations to join events, he was told to give speeches, advertisers wanted a piece of him... he was the talk of the country. In a sense, it's what he wanted - the more publicity and public knowledge, the more money that would come rolling in for the cause he was championing. There was, however, a difficulty associated with all this in the form of quite simply the great strain of having to deal with the limelight of sudden celebrity, mixed with the ever present fact that he was still running a tremendous amount daily, surely enough to tire the average man out before the meetings and general public had a chance to even see him. While it weighed heavily on him, and there were times when he genuinely wished he could simply go home, the emotionally ravaged and physically exhausted Terry Fox pressed on.

Terry Fox's entire route. I am suddenly very embarrassed
thinking how proud of myself I am when I run 5km. 

To make matters worse, a newspaper ran a story accusing Terry of driving rather than running through Quebec. Fox became irate, got him on the phone and broke down and cried, yelling at the author and asking him why he would write such an article. The writer was a man named Doug Collins, and naturally I was inclined to feel a deep, seething hatred for the man seeing as how he made damaging accusations against a Canadian hero... but then I read he's a World War II veteran and suddenly my feelings are mixed. Gosh darn it, couldn't he have just been a Nazi or something so I could feel black and white emotions towards him?

While the Marathon of Hope had suddenly come to the nation's attention at a tremendously grand scale, his cancer had come back in full force. Spreading to his lungs, with a tumour the size of a lemon in one and a golf ball in another (but likely neither sour nor labeled as a Titleist) grew and were showing no signs of leaving. In one of the most emotionally charged speeches you're going to see, Terry was forced to abandon his attempt due to the complications from the disease. In recognition for his lion level of courage and a whale's level of heart (they probably have huge hearts), he was the youngest ever to receive the Order of Canada, one of the most prestigious awards a Canadian citizen can achieve.

Terry Fox passed away on June 28th, 1981, but his legacy continues. The Terry Fox Foundation has raised $600 million for cancer research, there is a mountain named in his honour, there are countless statues, streets and buildings in his name, and teachers everywhere rejoice in having the joys of cancelling a half-day of school for the annual Terry Fox Run.

Terry Fox is what every Canadian should aspire to be.

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The information for this blog was largely taken from ESPN's 30 for 30 on Terry Fox, titled Into the Wind.
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Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. "I'm running on one leg. It may not look like I'm running fast, but I'm going as hard as I can."  He is, by definition, a trooper - at least in the Urban Dictionary version.
2. "It took cancer to realize that being self-centred is not the way to live. The answer is to try and help others." Quotes like that helped him beat out Trudeau for CBC's list of the greatest Canadians.
3. "Even if I don't finish, we need others to continue. It's got to keep going without me."