ON THE MAP
April 2020 marks 40 years since Terry Fox’s monumental Marathon of Hope
Charting Terry Fox’s monumental Marathon of Hope 40 years after it began in St. John’s
OOn a grey morning in St. John’s, April 12, 1980, Terry Fox stooped to fill a jug with Atlantic water — to pour into the Pacific at the end of his journey — touched the pebbles in the surf, spoke to some local reporters and started running. Few attended the start of the 21-year-old’s Marathon of Hope.
He rose before dawn each day to face another 42 kilometres, as well as pounding spring storms in Newfoundland, scorching heat in Ontario and, although he didn’t know it yet, the return of the osteosarcoma that had taken his right leg. But his resolve to reach his geographic goal drove him, as did his fundraising goal of $1 million (and later $24 million, or $1 from each Canadian at the time) to further cancer research and his need to prove that cancer victims do not lose an ounce of their humanity and need not give in to despair.
Fox received little or no reception in many communities but was buoyed along wherever locals did come to cheer him on and donate to his cause. Of course, the athlete and activist from Port Coquitlam, B.C., was forced off his route in Thunder Bay, Ont., on day 143. His cancer had spread to his lungs, and he died just months later, on June 28, 1981.
Communities, businesses and individuals donated $1.7 million while Fox was running. A national CTV telethon in his honour a week after his marathon ended brought in $10.5 million. Since then, annual Terry Fox runs and other Terry Fox Foundation initiatives across Canada and around the world have raised almost $800 million for cancer research.
Well before he took those first strides in St. John’s, Fox had told a friend that he aimed to run the length of Canada and, in a sense, he did (see inset map, top right). Few national symbols have proven as potent, unifying or enduring as the optimistic young Fox outrunning cancer for 5,373 kilometres.
See the map for a few highlights from his legendary run.