The night before Terry Fox had his leg amputated, someone gave him a copy of Runner’s World magazine.
The edition included an article about an amputee who had completed the New York City Marathon.
“He decided to run not just a marathon, not just across a province, but across all of Canada,” says John Brant, whose working on a story about Fox for the 40th anniversary of the Oregon-based magazine.
Brant, who has worked at the magazine that is the runners’ bible for 25 years, has been following Darrell Fox around as he prepares to launch the 26th version of the Terry Fox run across Canada.
Both Brant and Fox were in Mississauga this morning as Fox, now national director of the Terry Fox Foundation and the official keeper of Terry’s flame on behalf of his family, renewed acquaintances with the good folks at the ScotiaMcLeod office here.
Seven years ago, Lyndon Fournier, the 58-year-old Port Credit-raised manager of the branch on the 14th floor of the Sussex Centre, decided to do some fundraising for a good corporate cause. He called the Fox Foundation and they offered to have Darrell come out to speak to the branch employees.
Fournier, who was then in the Oakville office, had a better idea. He decided to invite clients and family and friends to a fundraising barbecue with Fox as the guest speaker. Now it’s an annual tradition, which raised $10,000 last year.
Once every year, about a month before the Terry Fox Run takes place, Darrell comes to Mississauga to accept a cheque from ScotiaMcLeod to kick off the local races and then goes to the Oakville barbecue. Later, he will attend a barbecue at Fournier’s house, ride his bike and then go for his daily 5-km run.
Today, senior investment executive Dean Morrison of Mississauga will be his pacer.
As a tribute to his brother, Fox has run 5 km every day for the past eight-and-one-half years.
“That’s nothing, absolutely nothing,” Fox said this morning. “Terry ran a marathon 146 days in a row. How could I ever worry about having a bad day and taking one off? We will not rest until we find a cure for cancer because cancer doesn’t take a year off. Every year, 150,000 Canadians are diagnosed and 70,000 die.”
Among those attending today was Kevin Wallace, who just finished raising $250,000 for the cancer centre at Trillium Health named for his mother Betty in another gruelling test of stamina, the Race Across America.
Wallace, who says he’s 90 per cent recovered from that experience, was inspired by Fox’s short, moving presentation, in which he recalled all the pain and pleasure of Terry’s run into the GTA 26 summers ago. (Fox went through Mississauga July 13, 1980).
Darrell read, through misty eyes, the closing words of Douglas Coupland’s fine book on the marathon.
“I could really feel Terry’s experience come alive again,” Wallace said. “It made me feel that Terry is still alive. “He’s probably done more for other people with his spirit than he would have if he’d still been around,” said Wallace. “I can still draw some energy from those lessons, to have a dream and pursue it and to persevere. Those lessons still live.”
The Port Credit Terry Fox Run, organized by Luisa McDonald and Avion John, who both attended today, goes Sept. 17 along the waterfront from the Port Credit lighthouse. Registration starts at 7:30 a.m., with the run at 9:15 a.m.