Forty-four years after his landmark Marathon of Hope, which spurred worldwide fundraisers each September for cancer research, raising nearly $1 billion to date in his name – Terry Fox continues to inspire with his brief but extraordinary life and enduring legacy.
The Winnipeg-born Fox lost a leg to cancer at age 18 in 1977 and set out to run across Canada on a prosthetic limb just three years later to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Phenomenally, he completed 3,339 miles over 143 days before he was halted by the cancer that would eventually claim his life in 1981, at age 22.
Despite an abundance of books, movies, and documentaries about Fox in the ensuing decades, untold stories remain. Dozens of those, as well as journal entries recorded by Fox during the Marathon of Hope – plus vintage pictures, letters, postcards, and news clippings – comprise Hope by Terry Fox, a new book spearheaded by the Fox family and helmed by Barbara Adhiya, a longtime newswire editor who interviewed the book’s many narrators to chronicle their memories.
These include siblings, coaches, teachers, friends, admirers, those who encountered Fox during the Marathon of Hope as well as those who accompanied his run: friend Doug Alward and Ontario Canadian Cancer Society emissary Bill Vigars, who last year released a memoir about his experiences. (Brother Darrell Fox, who also joined the Marathon of Hope, assisted with the book but is not directly quoted in it).
Also sharing anecdotes and recollections are retired newscaster Lloyd Robertson, NHL great Darryl Sittler, acclaimed athlete and paralympian Rick Hansen, Ben Speicher, the prosthetist who made Fox’s artificial leg, and reporter Leslie Scrivener, who documented the unfolding Marathon of Hope for The Toronto Star, becoming a Fox family friend who later authored her own book about Terry Fox.
Everyone quoted in Hope by Terry Fox was irrevocably touched by him, including people like Peter and Judy Rebelein, bakery owners in Gravenhurst, Ont., who made a cake for Fox’s birthday when he passed through their town, and nurse Judith Ray, who cared for Fox in the pediatric unit of the Royal Columbian Hospital during and after his amputation. (An excerpt from Hope by Terry Fox, featuring Ray’s reminiscences of the Canadian hero during his hospital stay, can be found at the end of this interview.)
Editor Adhiya too, was profoundly inspired by Fox, as she explained to Zoomer from her Toronto home ahead of the book’s release and this year’s Terry Fox Run, taking place Sept. 15.
KIM HUGHES: The Terry Fox film and literature canon is extensive. Did you have any trepidation about uncovering something new?
BARBARA ADHIYA: No. I had learned about Terry in school but there were many things I did not know, which I saw as an advantage. Through the year-and-a-half process of making the book, I was learning about Terry’s life from people who knew him. And that’s what you’ll experience from this book. It’s about who Terry was as a human being, as well as the run, and how all of that changed the people connected with him. Many gold nuggets came out.
KH: How did you settle on this roster of people to interview?
BA: Some were recommended by Darrell Fox, like Terry’s childhood friends – Rika Schell, his girlfriend at the time, and Doug Alward, who rarely speaks publicly. No one said no. One led to another, and we were able to piece together a picture of who Terry was before the Marathon, before his amputation, and what made him and the Marathon of Hope possible.
KH: What was the most surprising or illuminating fact you uncovered in this research?
BA: Terry ran more miles in training than on the actual run. He would have made it as far as the B.C. border. He had no problem showing people his stump and yet he had to wear a wig from the chemotherapy he underwent. Rick Hansen shares a great story about them being in a scrum and Terry’s wig goes flying. They didn’t even realize he was wearing a wig, which he hopped out to grab. That says so much. He was an attractive young man, and he felt that if people looked at him with a bald head, they would see him as still being sick.
KH: What was the hardest thing to get right with the book?
BA: I have a journalism background; I worked for 20 years as an editor with Canadian Press, Associated Press, and Reuters. Being accurate is extremely important but we were talking to people 44 years after the run. People’s memories can be fluid. Some died. Take Dick Traum, who was the first man to run the New York City Marathon in 1976 on a prosthetic leg. He was a huge inspiration to Terry. But Dick died last January before seeing the finished book. [His interview is included]. We wanted to honour people’s memories, and to paint Terry through their eyes and experiences. So we couldn’t be that exacting.
KH: What’s the most important thing for people to know about your book?
BA: How inspiring Terry Fox is. This project changed my life. I had lost my career, was laid off, and went back to school in 2021. Then I got divorced in December 2022. January of 2023, my 95-year-old grandmother, who raised me, went into hospital, where she died. Six weeks later I got the call to work on the Terry Fox book. Not long after, I was driving with Darrell to interview Jim Brown and Garth Walker (cyclists who biked from Toronto to Ottawa to raise money for the Marathon of Hope) when I got the call that a friend, who was like a sister, had died of cancer.
This book, this subject, gave me such strength. I would think about what Terry did and feel that I could overcome any challenges. That sentiment was echoed by the people who knew him and who I interviewed for the book. People call themselves Terry Foxers. Now I’m a Terry Foxer, too. Because of him, whatever I am facing, I can get through it.
In the excerpt below, Judith Ray, a nurse at B.C.’s Royal Columbian Hospital during Fox’s amputation and recovery, discusses the physical, mental and emotional “how” of Terry’s endurance and drive.
In wanting to explain the “how” of what Terry did, I ask Judith if she, as a nurse, could explain the physiology, the intertwining of emotion, physics, mentality, and energy.
Now, from a physiological perspective, we know that people who run marathons even once in a while have the endorphin flow that gets everything working. It’s a natural part of your body that gives you that kick to keep going. And there’s no question when you’re running twenty-six miles a day, you’re going to have lots of endorphins flowing along the way that are what’s also bearing the pain, because that will give you relief from what most of us would be feeling as pain and agony.
Terry mentioned pain often in his journal, and that if he continued and pushed through it, he’d get past it and be okay. He was encouraged by the people who would cheer for him on the roads. Wonderful experiences also release endorphins. You watch fireworks and the excitement you feel releases them. Enjoying a concert, you get caught up in the euphoria of the moment. It’s endorphins that are being released. This was a two-way exchange: people saw him and felt so much, so euphoric from the moment with him, that they were in tears, and then they gave this energy back to him as he passed.
Can you imagine the euphoria when he walked into that City Hall area in Toronto? These amazing crowds that are wanting to, practically, lift you up and air-move you through the crowd, right? That would be very euphoric, I’m sure. Overwhelming at the same time, because he’d be busy thinking, ‘I’m supposed to be back on the road. How am I going to do both of these things?’ But it would have been amazingly reinforcing for him that he was on the right track, and it was the right thing to do.
Having such a packed schedule certainly exhausted him and depending on their accommodations he didn’t always sleep well. At times, he preferred to sleep in the van on a quiet road because it was familiar, and he could get into a deeper rest.
All of that euphoria, what happens is you crash afterwards. Sleep, sometimes in exhaustion, isn’t totally renewing because you’re exhausted, you’re depleted, but necessary obviously. You can’t run on adrenaline forever. You’ve got to start getting some reinforcement and replenishment along the way.
His heightened endorphins would accumulate so much that even if he slept poorly, he would still have some left with him in the morning. He was overflowing. He was able to wake up and get going.
I had interviewed so many people before I interviewed Judith, and she put into words and explained what I had been feeling but was unable to put into words. We sometimes forget, or underestimate, what can happen when we are with others, or we connect with one another, the exchange of energy.
Looking back, you have no idea when you’re encountering somebody along the way of life, how that particular encounter at any given time will happen to be the right person in the right place at the right time. To either say the right thing or do the right thing, that gives people what it is they need at that moment to go forward. And often, we never know whether it made a difference or not.
Excerpt used with permission from ECW Press/Burman Books.
Hope by Terry Fox is available for purchase on Sept. 3, 2024.
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