Parents, firefighters and a local RCMP officer joined Grassland School in their Terry Fox Run-Turkey Trot Oct. 20, raising money for cancer research.
About 100 people, including students and community members, ran laps around the Grassland School field, and were sponsored in the amount of about $1,000 to do so.
School principal Rod Kerr said the run-walk was actually planned to happen Oct. 13, but snowy weather made the school push it back a week. He also said they usually run down Main Street, but last year a blizzard made them move to the field.
Kerr also said this was the first year a member of the school’s community spoke about a personal battle with cancer.
“The kids were very quiet,” he said. “I don’t think it really hit them until now. We talked about cancer a lot in different classes. And I think that aspect ... was probably missing out of what we needed to do.”
Grassland School teacher Natasha Gillman spoke about her own battle with cancer, as well as how cancer killed family and friends around her.
In an interview after her presentation before the run, she said her story is a way to keep the run for cancer research relevant to children and the community.
“Terry Fox has been gone for so long, none of these kids were even alive when that happened,” she said. “There’s no connection to him anymore. We hear in the media more and more how Terry Fox runs, nobody’s coming, communities aren’t holding them anymore. So if we want this to continue, it has to be relevant ... I’m someone they know. They don’t know Terry Fox.”
Kerr also pointed out that almost everybody knows someone who has been affected by cancer.
“A focus on cancer – it’s so insidious,” he said. “And like I said – who can really, legitimately say they don’t know somebody that’s close enough for them to really know all the things about them, that hasn’t been affected by cancer?”
He also said the community support in the run is a big part of the event, from the fire department bringing their trucks to parents running with their kids. As such, the school would likely move their run back to Main Street next year.
“Part of this is community, a big part,” he said. “And we want community exposure ... If we want to have a robust group and everyone knowing that it’s out there, we want to make sure big parts of the community like this or other things are visible.”
