I am proud to report that I was one of the journalists covering that heroic highway convoy. It was a courageous event that demonstrated the strength of human spirit.

 
It happened without me being verbally abused, or spat upon. Reporters were treated with respect.

As it crossed the country, gaining cheering supporters along the roadsides, I realized this was a powerful story that could change Canada and Canadians. It changed me.

I’m not talking about the truck convoy that travelled to Ottawa to protest health restrictions to control the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed six million people worldwide.

 
The convoy I covered was 42 years ago when a 22-year-old curly-haired kid with an artificial leg decided to run coast to coast to raise awareness and money for cancer research. 

In 1977, Terry Fox, a Port Coquitlam, B.C. university student, was diagnosed with cancer. His right leg was amputated. Doctors told him that medical advances gave him a 50-per-cent chance of survival, up from 15 per cent because of research.

Fox endured 16 months of chemotherapy and practised running on the artificial leg. He ran with difficulty but determined he would run a Marathon of Hope to collect money for more cancer research.

On April 12, 1980 he dipped a leg into the Atlantic Ocean near St. John’s, Newfoundland, then began running west toward the Pacific. 

 
The pain never slowed the odd hip-hop gait that carried him roughly 42 kilometres (26 miles) a day. Until it did, on the eastern outskirts of Thunder Bay. An ambulance carried him to hospital where he learned the cancer had spread to his lungs.

Terry Fox ran 5,373 kilometres (3,339 miles} in 143 days. He didn’t whine. He didn’t curse and shake his fist at government action or inaction on health matters. He just ran his heart out in a fight against a deadly disease he believed could be defeated. 

Ten months later I was at a Port Coquitlam hospital when Leslie Shepherd, a talented young reporter stationed outside Terry’s room, sent me a pre-arranged signal. I fashioned her signal into a wire news service bulletin and sent it out to the world: Terry Fox was dead.
 
The story did not end there. Terry Fox’s fight against cancer has raised nearly $1 billion for cancer research in the past 40 years. That’s money that has saved or prolonged many thousands of lives.

That’s why it is heartbreaking to see the protesters mock the Terry Fox memorial near Parliament Hill, draping it with anti-vaccine signs and upside-down Maple Leaf flags. Some were reported to have danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Most heartbreaking is that protests against COVID-19 precautions are prolonging the pandemic, overburdening hospitals and delaying cancer treatments Terry Fox ran so hard to have improved.

Some have called the convoy truckers and their supporters heroes. They are in fact anti-heroes who lack the courage, fierce determination and hope that shone from Terry Fox’s eyes every step along his Marathon of Hope. They are the worst of the self-centered in an increasingly self-centred society.

“It took cancer to realize that being self-centered is not the way to live,” Terry Fox once said. “The answer is to try and help others.” 

We are all tired of the pandemic and the restrictions it has placed on our lives.

 
Terry Fox was tired of being without a leg. Tired of months of cancer treatments. Tired of thoughts of dying.

But he refused to succumb to bellyaching and a “woe is me” attitude. He stood straight on his artificial leg and ran. Ran in a battle against a terrible disease. Ran to improve life for us all.

“I just wish people would realize that anything's possible if you try,” he said. “Dreams are made possible if you try.”

The truckers’ convoy didn’t bring dreams to Ottawa. They brought Nazi banners, Confederate flags, anger, hatred and other relics of American Trumpism.

This is a country that neither needs, nor wants Trumpism. It’s a country that needs respectful protests, positive actions, much better leadership and appreciation of its heroes.

Terry Fox, the young man who refused to let disease consume his spirit, is a true Canadian hero whose memory deserves our utmost respect

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Fox for the ‘Fiver’

I can’t think of a better person to put on future $5 bills than Terry Fox, the most inspirational Canadian of the last half century.

The Bank of Canada is redesigning the banknote, sometimes called a “fin” or a “fiver”, and has invited nominations from the public on whose picture should appear on the front of the new bill. Nominations close March 11.

Port Coquitlam. B.C., Terry Fox’s hometown, has mounted a full-out campaign urging people across the country to nominate their most famous citizen.

“Terry has just an amazing legacy, not only here in his hometown of Port Coquitlam, not only in British Columbia, not only in Canada, but around the world,” says the city’s Mayor Brad West. “He has inspired, and he continues to inspire, millions of people.”

Terry Fox was an athletic teenager in 1977 when he was diagnosed with cancer in his right leg. The leg was amputated but he continued long-distance running on a prosthetic leg.

After the amputation and 16 months of chemotherapy Fox concluded that his life had been saved by medical advances and decided to raise money for more research and to help other cancer patients have hope and courage.

In the spring of 1980, he began a Marathon of Hope in which he planned to raise money by running across Canada from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Vancouver. He ran for 143 days, covering 5,373 kilometres before having to give up when the cancer returned, this time to his lungs.

Forty years later, many people, me included, continue to be powerfully impressed by the courage and selflessness of Terry Fox.

He is a true hero in my eyes and my memories of him have been little dimmed by the passage of four decades. One reason they remain so bright and clear perhaps is because our lives intersected at several points.

In 1980 I was a journalist working for The Canadian Press news agency in Vancouver and news of Fox’s Marathon of Hope was a story of great interest. When he dipped his leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s we journalists in Vancouver began thinking about news coverage plans for when he got close to home.

Fox was well into Northern Ontario in August when I got news that my mother was ill in Sault Ste. Marie. I went there to be with her.

She died and I was in charge of carrying out her last wishes, including bringing her body to Thunder Bay to be buried with my father. Crazy as it sounds, that included written instructions to have her body driven from the Soo to Thunder Bay because she had a lifelong terror of airplanes.

I could not ignore her wishes and her body was driven around Lake Superior, passing Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope along the way.

In Thunder Bay, I stood on the steps of the funeral home waiting for visitors to arrive for my mother’s wake when I saw flashing red lights down the street. They were at St. Joseph’s Hospital, a place I knew well because I was born there and my father died there.

A passerby informed me that Terry Fox had just been brought into the hospital. I started running towards the hospital until I realized that being at my mother’s funeral was more important than covering a story, as big a story as it appeared to be.

Terry was brought back home for hospitalization and treatment. Nine and a half months later, on June 19, 1981, I found myself at a New Westminster, B.C. hospital with Leslie Shepherd, one of the finest journalists I have worked with. There at 4:30 a.m. we flashed the news that Terry Fox had died.

It was an incredibly sad event, even for journalists used to covering sad things. But with the sadness came the realization this was not just another passing story. It was a story that would live and inspire for decades.

It has and I hope it will continue to live and inspire with Terry Fox’s face on the five-dollar bill.

Also, putting Fox on the fiver would be a tribute to young Canadians, whose talents and achievements are not often recognized enough.

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Terry Fox and the Election Debate

I dreamed last night that during the Great Federal Election Debate, Terry Fox, wearing trademark t-shirt and running shorts, limped onto the set and stared each leader in the eye. In return, they stared at the floor and shuffled their feet.

Debate day was the 31st anniversary of the Marathon of Hope, in which Terry Fox endured exhaustion and pain to do something worthwhile for millions of people. Canada has had few visible heroes since. There are heroes working quietly in fields such as medicine, education, and in family life, but certainly not in politics.

Imagine

In my dream I wished that Terry's appearance would cause the leaders to throw away their notes and step forward individually and declare: "Here are the problems we face in our country. Here is how I believe we can tackle them. Whatever the outcome of the election I'll work with other leaders, and all Canadians, to make things better for all of us."

That didn't happen, of course, even in my dream. That's because politicians follow the polls and their spin masters, in the greedy pursuit of party power. Terry Fox followed his heart, concentrating on the next kilometre of pavement ahead. One more kilometre, one more small contribution to the common good.

Imagine if the politicians had decided to cancel the debates and focus all that energy, money and talk on the specific problems that need solving in this country. One focussed, painful step at a time down the centre line of the road that leads to a better place for all of us.

Imagine.