Somebody said that it couldn’t be done

But he with a chuckle replied

That “Maybe he couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried

-Edgar Albert Guest

Somewhere in a lonely lay-by in rural Canada, Terry Fox reads these words before climbing into his sleeping bag and falling, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep. A poem handed to him by a woman in New Brunswick, he has its simple homespun wisdom stuck to the inside of his cramped sanctuary – a brown Ford Econoline van.

In the morning, Terry will rise early and run a marathon. Today, he ran a marathon. Yesterday, he ran a marathon. Two days before that, he ran a marathon. Three weeks from now, he’ll be running a marathon.

Even if you think you know the Terry Fox story already, just let the enormity of the effort sink in: 35 years ago, Terry Fox dipped his foot in the Atlantic Ocean, and then proceeded to run a marathon every day for three months, making it two-thirds of the way across Canada with a steel leg and a titanium will. As a story of human endurance, it’s nearly inconceivable. As a story of human spirit, it touched not just every Canadian, but people around the world.

But don’t think about the hero, think about the boy. See him sleeping there, wrung out from the road and the pressures of the fundraising that attends it, his hair grown back curly after chemotherapy. He’s just 21, an ordinary Canadian kid from an ordinary Canadian family sleeping in a Ford camper-van with his younger brother and his best friend.

Terry Fox was born near the middle of Canada, in Winnipeg. The second of four children, he grew up in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

If you look through the family photos shown in Douglas Coupland’s Terry, you see a familiar story taking place. Basketball, baseball, soccer, running; the Foxes were a sporting family, and if Terry seemed particularly determined to achieve his goals – just five-foot-six and trying out for the basketball team – there was nothing particularly remarkable in that.

He’d likely have become a teacher or a coach – he had the drive and leadership. But in November of 1976, Terry was driving his hand-me-down 1968 Ford Cortina down the Lougheed highway and he had an accident. Everything changed.

The crash wasn’t serious, but the pain was persistent. In March of the next year, the diagnosis was made and less than a week after that Terry had his leg amputated above the knee. His athletic career had come to a shocking end.

Of course, Terry being Terry, no it hadn’t. Within months he was playing on a wheelchair basketball team alongside Rick Hansen; they would take the Canadian championship in 1978, another trophy for the Fox mantelpiece.

However, something happened in the chemotherapy wards that deeply changed this resilient, competitive young man. He saw the suffering of those around him, he saw the anguish of their families, the despair and the pain. He wanted to do something about it. So he did.

A month and a half after Terry and his friend Doug Alward had started out on their Marathon of Hope, Terry’s younger brother Darrell Fox finished his high school exams early and flew out to join his brother in Saint John, New Brunswick.

“I have a vivid and very real memory of seeing him on the road looking even more determined than I remembered. He wasn’t expecting to see a family member, so it was a surprise for him.” In the middle of the road, cars whizzing past them, the brothers embraced.

Darrell had been sent out by the Fox family as something of a peacemaker. The road was tougher than either Terry or Doug had imagined, and tensions had been high in those cramped quarters. By the time the younger Fox boy arrived, however, things had mostly settled into a routine. He sat in the back of the van quietly as it moved down the road to the next stopping point.

“It was pretty quiet,” Darrell says. “I remember thinking, ‘Why aren’t people all over this?’”

The van was an E250 Econoline, loaned to the Marathon of Hope by Ford of Canada, and customized by Funcraft. It was homely, brown, squat, and after months of travelling with three young men in it, a little whiffy.

“A little? A little?” Darrell Fox laughs. “It was devastating! When we restored it, I’m glad we didn’t bring back that odour.”

With Darrell on board, the van became a sort of rolling locker-room and clubhouse, filled with the reek of unwashed sweatshirts, shoes worn without socks, unrefrigerated food and an onboard chemical toilet. Darrell figures that in the latter part of the trip, when Terry began to be mobbed by the media, the stink of the place helped repel over-eager reporters.

Some days, it was the adventure of a lifetime. Every two miles, Terry would stop for water and a quick rest, breaking his long road into chunks. Darrell would update the mileage written on the side of the van constantly, the sun would shine, and the Marathon would pass through villages thronged with cheering Maritimers.

Every day was a hard day for Terry; blisters, fatigue, pain – sometimes blood would run down his prosthetic leg, and even after putting in the miles, there were speeches to make, benefits to attend. Worse, these were the days long before social media, and getting the word out about the run was difficult. Sometimes people had heard the news and were there to cheer Terry on, but often there were just a few stragglers.

Hard days indeed – in Quebec, with a cruel wind coming up off the St. Lawrence River, Terry ran behind the van with Darrell holding the rear door open with his legs as a wind-break. It was gruelling work for all three, not least Doug Alward at the wheel, keeping the van at a constant pace. It went on for days.

“It was overwhelming,” Darrell says of watching his brother run. As the miles mounted, Terry’s entire body was changing, his face sunburned and windburned, his brawny wheelchair-athlete upper body shrinking, losing weight. There were no energy drinks, no clever gels and protein packs – Terry ran fuelled by plain road fare, burgers and fries, pancakes and orange juice. The left side of his face was more burnt than the right, having run Westward for so long.

By the time the Marathon of Hope reached Ontario, Terry’s story had reached critical mass. The donations came pouring in from ordinary Canadians; Terry met Olympians, hockey legends, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Even as the adulation grew, he was quick to deflect it.

“To me, being famous is not the idea of the run,” he said, addressing a crowd of thousands at the Scarborough Civic Centre. “The only important part is that cancer can be beaten. Even if I don’t finish, it’s got to keep going without me.”

Saturday, August 31, 1980

Day 142

3,318 Miles



Today was all right. Started late and it was cold for the entire morning. Twelve, eleven. Nothing else happened.

On Labour Day of 1980, Terry Fox ran his last mile. First though, he ran 18 miles with the two lumps of bone cancer growing in his lungs, then after a rest he ran two more with pain and coughing, and then he got up after 15 minutes rest and ran that one last mile.

There’s a wooden post to mark the spot, a simple marker set down west of Thunder Bay. Twelve kilometres farther, a 10-foot-tall bronze statue of Terry is a popular tourist attraction. I think he’d like the post better.

From this point, the brown Ford van turned back, and Terry flew on into the west. He would have months yet, time enough to see the effect his efforts had, millions of dollars raised, the promise of a lasting legacy. He would become the youngest person ever to be awarded the Order of Canada.

Currently the Terry Fox Foundation has raised something on the order of $650 million, far beyond Terry’s original goal. A separate entity, the Terry Fox Research Institute channels this money into life-saving research. Dr. Marco Marra, head of TFRI’s B.C.-based node speaks excitedly of its pan-Canadian programs. “It’s hard to think of an agency we aren’t in partnership with,” he says. Today, the osteosarcoma that felled Terry is treatable, survivable.

But 35 years ago in Thunder Bay, the brown Ford Econoline turned back east. A vessel filled with the sweat and stink of human endeavour, it had come as far as it would go. People who saw it returning cheered at first, before they realized what that eastward journey meant. Many wept.

The van would have a curious second life. Reclaimed by Ford, it was painted again and sold to a family who used it for camping. It later passed into the hands of Bill Johnston, guitarist for Vancouver-based rock band Removal. It became the band’s tour vehicle, racking up hundreds of thousands of kilometres criss-crossing North America to gigs.

In 2007, author Douglas Coupland stumbled across the van based on a tip from an artist friend who claimed Terry Fox’s old Ford was parked on his street. Together with Darrell, he headed out to East Vancouver, near the PNE fairground, turned a corner into a side street and – there it was.

“It was pretty rough,” Darrell says, but the van hadn’t been altered. After Johnston agreed to sell the van back to the Fox foundation, Darrell reached out to Ford Canada again. “Wasn’t the best time for any car company, in 2008, but they agreed to restore it,” he says.

The Econoline was trucked back to Ontario and what began next was more conservation than restoration. The van would be kept as close to original as possible – instead of replacing the carpets, they were hand-scrubbed for days.

The work was completed in months, just in time for the van to do a cross-country tour the foundation called the Tour of Hope. They trailered it from town to town, raising money and giving people a chance to reminisce.

“We opened its doors,” Darrell Fox says, “and the stories flowed out.”

The van is now part of an exhibition at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.

We sometimes say that people have lost their fight to cancer, but that’s the wrong way to speak of it. Terry Fox didn’t lose his battle with cancer; he simply lived until he died – fiercely, valiantly, joyfully.

That’s what should resonate so deeply with us, not that he became a heroic symbol, cast in bronze, 10 feet tall, but that he was just a kid waking up in a smelly old camper van at four o’clock in the morning, ready to go out into the cold, as long as his body would let him. His efforts were heroic, but he was human.

Terry Fox died on June 28, 1981, at 4:35 a.m., his favourite time for making distance, alone on the road, chipping away at his goal.

His journey affected thousands of lives, it brought people together across the nation and around the world – he made a difference.

Most of all, he showed us what remains when this frail human form turns traitorous, and death reaches out. He showed us courage. He showed us grit. He showed us purity of heart and dogged determination.

He showed us hope.

Donations can be made to the Terry Fox Foundation at www.terryfox.org/donate.

(Originally published April 15, 2015)