Terry Fox

Bup-buhda-bup, bup-buhda-bup, bup-buhda-bup.

This is the sound that meets you at the start of the Terry Fox exhibit I visited at the museum last week. It’s the audio on a video of a handsome boy with a grim demeanour and a ghastly prosthetic leg, running (can you even call it “running”? It was more of an awkward, clunking hop) along the serpentine Trans-Canada Highway, uphill and down, rain or shine, utterly alone with no sound but the rhythm of his gait.

Bup-buhda-bup, bup-buhda-bup, bup-buhda-bup.

I stood at the exhibit entrance and thought, I won’t make it through this.

Well, I did make it. The exhibit is not designed to wring a tear and make you reach for your wallet. It’s simply the story of how a kid from Port Coquitlam set out to make a difference and became an unintentional hero. More than that, he became a part of our national story.

I was nineteen years old when the Marathon of Hope began. Naturally, since it didn’t concern me personally, I was only dimly aware that a boy who’d lost a leg to cancer was trying to raise money for research by running from St John’s to Victoria during the summer of 1980. The awareness only came after his solitary run had started to gain momentum and he was suddenly featured on every nightly newscast.

Prior to that, he was running pretty much by himself, with a buddy in the van behind him and his brother along for moral support (and to act as referee when he and said buddy started scrapping on the road). The sheer magnitude of what he was trying to accomplish completely escaped me until it was over and schools were being named for him. I regretted not paying more attention at the time, but thanks to his family and a dedicated team, the details of his journey are available in ways they wouldn’t have been had he lived to reach his modest goal of raising a million dollars.

The exhibit chronicles the evolution of what became the Marathon of Hope, from the initial diagnosis of Terry’s cancer (his name wasn’t even mentioned in the doctor’s report; he was referred to as “the boy”) to the marathon’s premature end in Thunder Bay, where his health finally failed and he had to fly home for more treatment. Everyone knows how the story ended, of course. That’s part of the tragedy—yet, as is so often the case, some lights burn so brightly that their lives are destined to be short. Besides, if Terry Fox had successfully emptied his jar of Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific at Mile 0, the effect may not have been so enduring. He was a remarkable young man, as compassionate as he was determined, as courageous as he must have been frightened, yet he persevered because he had watched other people suffer in the cancer ward and decided that it had to stop.

Today is the annual Terry Fox run. It happens every September and has done so for years. It’s coordinated in countless communities all across Canada. People sign up for it who weren’t even born when Terry dipped his artificial foot in the ocean off Newfoundland. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised to fund cancer research and will continue to be raised because of his mission to make others’ lives better.

The weather report predicted rain for today—the first rain we’ve seen all summer. My first thought was of sympathy for all those people who’ve committed to participate in the run ... then I remembered the video at the opening of the museum display.

Bup-buhda-bup, bup-buhda-bup, bup-buhda-bup.