Darragh's National Ride of Hope: Who is Terry Fox?

Who is Terry Fox? If you are Canadian, you already know the answer to that question. If you are from another country, you might not be familiar with the name.

So, who is Terry Fox and why am I cycling across the country to raise funds for The Terry Fox Foundation? Terry Fox is a national hero in Canada and has been my personal hero for my entire life. I say that he "is" a national hero despite the fact that he died 25 years ago. He left such an enduring legacy that it seems unfitting to relegate his hero status to the past tense.

Terry Fox was a young man from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia who lost a leg to cancer at the age of eighteen. After enduring his own hardships and seeing the suffering of other patients (including children), he set out to raise funds for cancer research to improve the outcomes of cancer patients in the future. In the spring of 1980, Terry started his Marathon of Hope - a solo cross-country run across Canada. I was seven years old when Terry started that run, and I remember being absolutely astounded at the immensity of the challenge. It boggled my mind that someone would even propose doing it. I became a distance runner in high school, competing in the longer track events and in cross-country races. I never ran a marathon. The distance (26 miles or 42 km) is daunting. Terry Fox was not only proposing to run a marathon, but to run one every day, 7 days a week, for half a year - and to do all that with an artificial leg. This wasn't like the modern artificial limbs or prosthetic devices that we see athletes using today. It was very basic by comparison. Take a look at any video of Terry Fox and you can instantly see how awkward and ungainly it was to try to run with an artificial limb of that design.

Photo credit: By Jeremy Gilbert - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3354942

Running any distance like that must have been tedious, painful and difficult for Terry. But he did it anyway. Mile after mile, town after town, day after day, for thousands of kilometres. He captured the heart of the nation and raised far more money than he could have ever expected. I was transfixed by his journey.

When I was a kid, dinner time in our house was 6:00 pm and that meant the whole family - no excuses, no absences, and certainly no television or other devices or distractions. But once I became aware of his journey, I insisted on being allowed to watch the first few minutes of the six o'clock news before dinner to see the latest update on Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope.

Terry made it about halfway across Canada on his Marathon of Hope before falling ill and being forced to abandon the journey in September. Cancer had spread to his lungs. He only had a few more months left to live. But he challenged the country to continue in his name, and Canada rose to that challenge. The Terry Fox Run is held annually in September in communities across Canada and around the globe. It is the largest single-day cancer research fundraiser in the world. I have been participating since I was a child. To date, the Terry Fox Foundation has raised more than a billion dollars to fund cancer research projects across Canada and around the world.

I still participate in the Terry Fox Run each year, but this summer I wanted to do something bigger and more meaningful. I still remember last year's run. I was on the road, as I am typically am working as a long-haul trucker. I couldn't be home for my town's Terry Fox Run, so I did my own solo 10 mile run in Washington DC. Two days later, I got a phone call from my doctor informing me that I had cancer. When I got back home, I faced a whole series of scans and tests to determine the extent of the disease and plan a strategy for dealing with it. The diagnosis was Stage 3 prostate cancer. I had radical prostatectomy surgery in December to remove my prostate (and some other bits and pieces). So far, my follow-up tests have been good and I am currently cancer free. That doesn't mean that I am perfectly healthy. There are issues that I have to deal with now following the surgery that make life more difficult, but the main thing is that I am still alive and for the most part able to function normally.

I believe that I am sufficiently healthy and capable of cycling across Canada this summer in support of the Terry Fox Ride of Hope. I am doing this ride solo as part of the foundation's "Ride Your Way' program. My ride will take at least 2 months and span at least 8,000 km (5,000 miles).

My personal cancer outcome is better than it would have been for someone with a similar diagnosis back in 1980. A lot of medical advances have taken place over the years since Terry Fox ran his Marathon of Hope. Situations that used to be considered a death sentence aren't necessarily fatal now. And the cases that are terminal often have longer timelines and better quality of life than was previously possible. That didn't happen by accident; it happened because researchers have devoted themselves to finding better treatments. That research doesn't come without a cost. In the spirit of Terry Fox, I want to raise money to keep those research projects funded so that future generations will have even better outcomes than what is possible today.

We all know someone, perhaps multiple people, who have been affected by cancer. For the people you loved and admired that had to face a battle with cancer, please consider donating to my ride.

My ride donation page: https://ride.terryfox.ca/page/darragh

More of Terry Fox’s Story: https://terryfox.org/terrys-story/#marathon-of-hope

Brief 1 minute video profile of Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope:
https://youtu.be/H2F9LbF_pF0?si=elWeRkoVhK-DBaEC