50 Canadians Who Changed the World by Ken McGoogan

Author:Ken McGoogan [McGoogan, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443409322
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

TERRY FOX AND RICK HANSEN

A Marathon of Hope encircles the globe

On April 12, 1980, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, a young western Canadian man dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean. Then he faced west and set out to run to Vancouver, 7,500 kilometres away. Bent on raising money for cancer research, Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope, using a distinctive hopping motion that anyone who saw it would never forget. The hope, courage, and commitment Fox displayed would inspire hundreds of thousands around the world. One of those he galvanized, a fellow British Columbian named Rick Hansen, would embark on a wheelchair journey to raise funds for spinal cord research, a tour that would take him through more than thirty countries. Together, Fox and Hansen changed the world by raising more than $600 million to combat two of the most debilitating conditions known to humankind.

Terry Fox himself did not dream of making that much difference when he set out to run across Canada. Born in Winnipeg on July 28, 1958, Fox grew up mostly in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, where dogged persistence enabled him to excel both as an athlete and a student. But in March 1977, soon after learning he had a cancerous tumour, he had his right leg amputated 18 centimetres above the knee. Just before undergoing the operation, he read a magazine article about an amputee runner, Dick Traum, who had participated in the New York Marathon. “I was lying in bed looking at this magazine,” he said later, “thinking if he can do it, I can do it, too.”

In a biography entitled Terry Fox: His Story, Leslie Scrivener describes how, at the hospital, during treatment, Terry heard doctors telling children they had a 15 percent chance of living. He heard youngsters crying in pain, and saw lives cut short by the disease. And when, after sixteen months of rehabilitation he finally went home, he began training for what he called his “Marathon of Hope.”

Using what today’s experts would term a rudimentary prosthesis, the young man whipped himself into shape by running more than 5,000 kilometres. He pushed his wheelchair along the sea wall at Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and tackled steep trails and rough logging roads, pushing himself until his hands bled. “I’m not a dreamer,” he told the Canadian Cancer Society when he sought their backing. “And I’m not saying this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer, but I believe in miracles. I have to.”

On April 12, 1980, accompanied by a few friends and family members, Terry Fox started running west out of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Initially, media coverage was light. But as weeks passed and Terry put distance behind him along the Trans-Canada Highway, news of his quixotic undertaking began to spread. By the time he reached Ontario, Canadians were lining the road to see him pass, pounding forward with his fists clenched, eyes fixed on the road ahead, his gait distinctive, unforgettable. Often, they wept. Terry would set out each morning before dawn, running in shorts and a T-shirt printed with a map of Canada.

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