‘He still hasn’t stopped’ – the Indomitable Terry Fox

I want to take a moment to express how grateful I am to be here in front of you all in the place where I have had the joy of listening to the Rev speak so often. I am very grateful that he is going to be around a little while longer, but I know too that one day I will listen to him for the last time in this Chapel, and that I too will never again speak in front of you all. I am trying to breathe in the moments of life, because the moments are all we really have, and for me, this is a moment I want to remember. And because it is hard to know when we may experience something for the last time; the last time you pretended to be asleep so your parents carried you inside from the car, the last time you said goodbye to your childhood friend, the last time your child held your hand. One day they let go and never took it again.

 

For most of you, you’re still more experiencing first times, but there are those in the Chapel who have the wisdom of knowing how to enjoy the sweetness of life because they know that it is fleeting, that it too shall pass. They know that the bad times will become teachers of resilience, and the good times will become the memories that comfort you in your quiet moments of solitude. You can tell who they are by the colour of their hair – mostly. 

 

They are the grey-haired that walk amongst us. Some are losing their grey hair, others are covering up their grey hair, and some have no hair at all. Youngsters in the room, take a moment and appreciate just how awesome those people are and know you will never be as cool as them, because you didn’t get to grow up in the 1980s.

 

Naturally, I too grew up in the ’80s; it was a mystical time before the internet, and it was awesome. Metal lunch boxes, BMX bikes, walkie-talkies, no cell phones. We used pencils to rewind our cassette tapes. When the hit song hit the radio, we would dive across the room to try and record it. We drank straight from the hose, our parents smoked like chimneys, phones were attached to the wall and were corded, Sunday night was for the Disney movie, and you knew it was time to go home only because the streetlights came on. When we had heroes, we truly believed in them. Like Rick Hansen, Mario Lemieux, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, or Elizabeth Manley. They were unimpeachable back then; there was no Twitter to take them down, no awkward Instagram posts from their ill-tempered youth, no screenshots of misjudged Snapchats, no cancel culture. Perhaps it was youthful naïveté, but it seemed to me as a kid that our heroes were good, pure and incorruptible, and the greatest, most important of them all, in my opinion, was Terry Fox.

 

He was born in Winnipeg in 1958 and grew up in Port Coquitlam in the ’60s and ’70s. A small kid, but feisty, like Mr. Fraser. He tried out for the basketball team every year – and got cut every year, until he finally made it in his senior years. Think of a honey badger in 1980s short-shorts and floppy hair playing basketball. That was Terry. 

 

In 1976, when he was 18 years old, he was driving his sweet mint-green 1968 Cortina home when he lost control of the vehicle. He wasn’t texting and driving; he got distracted by bridge construction. He walked away from the accident with little more than a sore right knee. A little bit of rest and he’d be fine, he thought. A month went by and the soreness was still there, but he was a very active athlete, so this was to be expected; muscle soreness is part of it. Finally, after three, then four, then five months of treating himself with painkillers and ice, he made an appointment in the Health Clinic at SFU, where he was in his first year of study in his Bachelor of Kinesiology.

 

He wasn’t injured. He was sick. Osteosarcoma. Cancer. He was diagnosed on March 3. Within six days of his diagnosis, his right leg was amputated just below the knee. Ten days after that, he went in to get fitted with a prosthetic leg. That’s the time from now until you go on leave for Thanksgiving. Life can come at you pretty fast. It was a blow that shattered his dreams and rewrote the story of his life. It would have crushed most people. But not Terry.

 

When I think about Terry, the word “indomitable” comes to mind. You just couldn’t keep him down. He never thought about his diagnosis as “why me?” but rather “why not me?” While undergoing chemotherapy, he witnessed the suffering of children all around him. Little kids, three and four years old, dying of cancer. Why him? No, why them? Cancer is the worst: it doesn’t distinguish, it doesn’t care. The sheer injustice of this horrible disease lit a fire in him, and he literally wasn’t going to take it sitting down. He started running.

 

If you’re anything like me, you probably hate running. Most of the time when I’m doing it, I feel like I’m going to die. But for Terry it became his life. The first time he went out running at the local track on his new running leg, he kept losing his balance and crashing to the ground, which prompted this horrible woman who was there with her children to yell at his friend Doug, who was with him, to “get that freak out of here!” There was lots about the ’80s that kinda sucked too now that I think about it.

 

How did Terry respond to this? He started training at night and early in the morning. He set small goals: make it to the end of the street, then to the corner, then to the sign. One small goal after another.

 

Then he signed up for his first race: The Prince George Half Marathon+, 27 km. He’d never even run 10. He ran it – and he finished dead last, a full 12 minutes behind the second-to-last runner. Terry’s attitude: he was pumped that he did it.

 

So pumped, in fact, that he announced right then and there that he was going to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. He then proceeded to train for 101 days in a row before taking one day off for Christmas. He ran again on Boxing Day. Before he left for Newfoundland to dip his foot in the Atlantic, he had already run 5,084 km in training.

 

His plan was simple: just an easy 200 marathons in a row. Considering no one had even run 100 in a row, and he was going to do it on one leg, this was ambitious, to say the least. As Terry himself said, “I want to try the impossible to show that it can be done.”

 

On day one he set out for his first marathon – 42.2 km. He only made it 16 km – less than halfway. He was too cold, too wet, it was too dangerous, there were too many dogs. He didn’t earn a single dollar. He was demoralized, but he didn’t give up.

 

His routine was the same each day. He loved the mornings, so he was up at about 4 a.m. each day to start running. When he ran, he was often dizzy, nauseous – his stump chafed and bled regularly, but he kept going. Into the wind, into the hail, and into the rain. One foot after another. Hoping to inspire each Canadian to donate just one dollar. He was cold at first, then too hot as the temperature soared when he entered Ontario. He was sunburned – always on his left cheek because he ran West across the country.

 

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Terry transformed from some kid running on the road into a national hero, but it was around Canada Day in 1980; he was met by throngs of well-wishers in Ontario and his movement exploded. He became a symbol for all Canadians who were up against it, who were trying their best each day to just get by; really, that’s most of us. He became an inspiration because of his resolve, and his suffering, and his determination. He became bigger than his pain and bigger than his diagnosis. When I’m having a hard day, or I’m struggling through a long run or ride, I think of Terry, running into the wind, on one leg. His perseverance is my inspiration

 

It was said of Terry as he ran, with that distinctive hop in his step that “his face was grim, not of pain, but of concentration; it’s the same look that children get when they struggle with a difficult math question.” He was criticized by some for being too pointed, too prickly with his critics. But he knew what was at stake; he understood what they couldn’t. We still know Terry, but no one remembers the nay-sayers

 

In Terry, parents saw their children. Young men and women saw in him their friends and brothers. Somehow, he became someone that we all felt we knew. He was so strong, and beautiful and vulnerable; he needed us, and we needed him. He was the thread that stitched together the country. He gave of himself so we could all benefit. He was pure.

 

On Sept 1, just outside of Thunder Bay Ontario, after running only 13 miles, he stopped because of debilitating pain in his chest. It was the last time he would ever run. Some may say that he failed in his goal, but if he did, he did so while daring so greatly that he would never be with the cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

 

Michael Dawson, who was 12 at the time, ran with Terry on that final day. He wrote Terry a letter. In it he said,

 

“When I returned to school that September, we were asked by our teacher what we did that summer. I proudly professed that I had run with Terry Fox. When asked what that meant to me, I replied, ‘One person can make a difference.’ Terry is an inspiration. He makes me proud to be Canadian.”

 

Terry Fox died on June 28, 1981 at the age of 23, at 4:35 a.m., his favourite time to go running, when he could enjoy the world, newly born, and filled with promise.

 

I think when you want to try to understand what it is that beats in the heart of Canada, you need look no further than Terry Fox. If you want to know about Canadians, really try to know Terry. He was the very best of us. He was young, like Canada, a little naïve, also like Canada, motivated and resilient. He was just naïve enough not to know that what he was doing was an impossible task. He stood up for people who couldn't stand up for themselves. 

 

As a nation, we don't really celebrate our nation-builders like many other countries. We don't have many national “heroes” beyond a few hockey players, and our scientists, politicians, generals, and other individuals of note are either understated or open to scrutiny. We don’t venerate our aristocracy or outdated hierarchies. We like it that way; that's how we want to be seen in the eyes of the world. Humble, yet proud; easy-going, yet firm in our convictions. That's why Terry Fox is so important to us. Most people around the world have never heard of him, but for us, he is what we aspire to be like. For me, he is the closest thing to the ultimate symbol of all that is good about Canada that we have.

 

Terry said, “Should I live, I will prove myself worthy of life.” Terry didn’t start out trying to raise nearly a billion dollars for cancer research. He didn’t start out trying to raise anything at all. He started out trying to walk on his stump on a prosthetic leg. But each obstacle that lay before him, whether it be people calling him a freak, or finishing last in his first race, or the weather in Newfoundland, or the cancer that finally claimed his life, Terry didn’t stop. He still hasn’t stopped. And so, I think about Terry when the challenges of my life seem too great, I think of his painful gait and the grimace on his face and I think, if he can take one more step so can I, so can you, and so can all of us, together.