40 years ago today Terry Fox, a 21 year old Canadian who lost a leg to cancer, began an east to west cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research. He ran the equivalent of a full marathon every day and made it to 145 days and 5,373km before he was forced to stop and he lost his battle with cancer.
Like how did people find out how we was doing this? It’s incredible nonetheless
It was 40 years ago so it would have been newspapers, magazines, or the nightly news.
It turned into a nationally supported cross country event that brought everyone together. Everywhere he travelled traffic was stopped, news coverage for just about every mile and the country mourned when he announced he had to stop because his cancer had returned. It was such a loss when he died.
He is also memorized on our money and on a page in our current passport s (I believe). Every year since he died Canadian school children participate in the annual Terry Fox run and to date there’s been more $800 million raised for cancer research from the countries who participate. Hope that kind of gives you some insight.
I found out because it was on TV. He must have been in Ontario by then, because the early part of the run didn’t get a lot of attention. I was 10. So if I knew, everyone probably knew.
He died on a Sunday. We were at church and the priest said something about it. It felt like everyone there was crushed by the news.
He set up a Patreon account.