Montrealer ran Terry Fox Run every year for 43 years
MONTREAL — Every year for 43 years, Montrealer Eddy Nolan took to the streets for a Terry Fox Run, usually carrying a big red and white Terry Fox flag on a pole as packs of children jogged behind him. This year, at 67, Nolan decided he could not run anymore.
On Friday — the anniversary of the day Fox began his crosscountry Marathon of Hope for cancer research in 1980 — the longtime marathon runner and Terry Fox advocate chose to end his life through medical assistance in dying. Complications from cancer treatment had robbed him of his quality of life, he said days before his death.
“I made 43 years, right to the end,” Nolan said Tuesday in his suburban Montreal home. The April 12 anniversary seemed a fitting time, knowing children would be out that day running in tribute to Fox. “I said: ‘It’s the perfect day for me.’ ”
Nolan was born in Pointe-St-Charles — a hardscrabble neighbourhood in south Montreal with deep Irish roots. He left home at 16 and learned to box well enough to win five Golden Glove championships.
At 22, he trained for his first marathon, and he found it hard. Then one night, he turned on the news and saw coverage of Terry Fox’s run. He was blown away.
While Nolan had been complaining about his own gruelling training, here was Fox running the distance of a full marathon every day on a single leg, after losing the other to cancer. Here was Fox, his eyes filled with pain and determination, half-hopping, half-running across Canada on a prosthetic leg, trying to help sick kids. “That’s a hero to me,” Nolan said.
After Fox succumbed to cancer at 22, Nolan was on the start line when the first Terry Fox run was held in 1981.
Over the years, Nolan retraced some of Fox’s steps, including running around the track where he trained in B.C. and visiting the hotel where Fox stayed near Thunder Bay, Ont., when his Marathon of Hope was cut short by cancer’s return.
The home Nolan shared with his longtime partner, Mary, and their dog is a testament to his lifetime commitment to honouring Fox’s legacy. There is a certificate from the first Terry Fox run, pictures signed by Fox’s family and friends, and paintings, drawings and banners.
But the home is also evidence of Nolan’s own legacy. On the walls and in drawers are dozens of hand-drawn cards and messages from the children he met in his long career at the English Montreal School Board as a caretaker and, increasingly, as an educator and advocate for Fox.
Each year he would lead the kids on the annual school Terry Fox Run, with chants of “Eddy, Eddy” ringing out as he started the first lap. “To me, it was always about the children,” he said.
Over the years, Nolan completed 65 marathons and helped to raise an estimated $1 million for the fight against cancer in Fox’s name.