Terry Fox

Who is Terry Fox?

Terrance Stanley Fox was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and raised in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. In 1977, at age 18, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a bone cancer, and had his right leg amputated above the knee. Determined to raise money and awareness for cancer research, he conceived the Marathon of Hope, a run across Canada on a prosthetic leg. He began at St. John's, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980, dipping his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean, and ran roughly a marathon (about 42 km) every day. Over 143 days he covered 5,373 kilometres, reaching Thunder Bay, Ontario, before the cancer spread to his lungs and forced him to stop. He died on June 28, 1981. The annual Terry Fox Run, held worldwide, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research in his name.

Sources: Leslie Scrivener, 'Terry Fox: His Story' (1981, revised 2000) · The Terry Fox Foundation official biography (terryfox.org) · Order of Canada citation, Companion of the Order of Canada, 1980