National hero Terry Fox saw a huge amount of Canada on his inspiring Marathon of Hope, which tragically ended in Thunder Bay after the discovery that his cancer had spread.

It’s hard to illustrate the mammoth distance he journeyed — 5,373 kilometres — using only words. Even on a map, the route itself doesn’t encapsulate just how long Fox ran on his one-man mission to spread optimism across Canada.

When you see how far Fox would have gone if he lived elsewhere, it’s truly astounding.

He could have gone coast-to-coast in the U.S, travelling from near the border of New Brunswick and Maine all the way through Midwest America, through Sin City and finishing near the Hollywood hills.

The route would have been a little lonely at times, hitting only five major cities (Portland in Maine, Cleveland in Ohio, Denver in Colorado, Las Vegas in Nevada and Los Angeles in California), but Fox would have run through at least five national forests and reserves, so it would have been picturesque.

He could have run along the Pacific Ocean if he’d been in South America, traversing a route that would have included three capital cities: Ecuador’s Quito, Peru’s Lima and Chile’s Santiago.

In Europe, he’d have hopped across seven borders, experiencing a wide mixture of climates and cultures. From the fine architecture of Barcelona and the Andalusian sun in Spain, through French wine country in Montpellier, past significant historical sites at Germany’s Nuremburg and Potsdam, entering Poland’s ‘Phoenix City’ of Warsaw, and finally moving into deepest Russia via the capital, Moscow.

If he’d started in Africa, he would have moved through some of the world’s most violent cities in South Africa’s Cape Town and Johannesburg. Conditions would have been littler better as he moved to Zimbabwe. From there, however, Fox would have journeyed through some amazing safari areas before coming to a halt in Kampala, Uganda’s largest city and capital.

Even running across the vast continent of Asia, Fox would have gone a remarkable distance. Beginning in the streets of Mumbai, he would have had to cross the Myanmar border and make inroads towards the South China Sea, halting in Cambodia after a route to the north of Bangkok, Thailand.

The 2015 Terry Fox Run takes place Sept. 20 in communities across Canada.