Terry Fox is my hero. In Canada, where I’m from, he is a legend. A runner who, to raise money and awareness surrounding the cancer that was killing him, started to run across Canada.
I was a few years older than Terry when he began his trek in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980, and he kept at it. He wasn’t setting any land speed records (unless you count the category of one-legged male runners because in that league he was peerless). He made it to Thunder Bay, Ontario, 3,340 miles from the starting line on Sept. 1, 1980. He died a month short of his 23rd birthday in 1981. His Marathon of Hope lives on though; the annual Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to involve millions of participants in over sixty countries and is now the world’s largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research; over $500 million has been raised in his name.
