Terry Fox Run back on familiar ground

Kelowna cancer fundraiser returns to Mission fields

This year’s Terry Fox Run in Kelowna, to be held Sunday, is returning to its roots at the Mission sports fields.

After a less-than-successful relocation to UBC Okanagan last year, when both participant numbers and fundraising dollars dipped markedly, the event will be staged once again at the sports fields on Gordon Drive in the Mission.

First-time organizers Norm and Kristina Sabourin hope to eventually return the run to its glory days when more than $100,000 was raised locally.

“As people taking this on for the first time, we’ve spent a lot of time building bridges throughout the community, and now we’re on a mad dash to actually getting everything ready for the run,” Norm Sabourin, a teacher at Big White Community School, said Wednesday.

The Sabourins, who are being assisted by a friend, Carole Harrison, in organizing the run, have rounded up more than 125 volunteers for Sunday.

They’ve also enlisted coupons worth thousands of dollars for things such as restaurant meals, golf passes and hotel stays to use in a silent auction on Sunday.

Online donations have been a little slow so far, Sabourin said, but he hopes that will pick up in the next few days. People participating in the run can also bring their contributions to the event.

“We’ll be happy however it goes, whatever the weather, but we’re hoping we’ll get at least 1,000 people out for the run,” Sabourin said.

Only about 500 people took part in the Terry Fox Run last year at the out-of-the-way university campus. Prior to that, when it was held at the Mission sports fields, about 1,500 people participated.

Fox, who’d lost a leg to cancer, ran 5,500 kilometres across Canada in 1980 before the disease returned. He died the following June. In the years since, runs held in his name have raised more than $700 million for cancer research.

“Terry was a true Canadian hero,” says Sabourin, who counts as one of his prize possessions a T-shirt worn by Fox on the ill-fated run. “Every dollar we raise in his memory takes us one step closer to achieving his dream of a world without cancer.”

Registration for the Terry Fox Run on Sunday at the Mission sports fields on Gordon Drive begins at 10 a.m., with the run to begin at 11 a.m.