Close to 500 students crowded the streets around the Neerlandia Public School to take part in the annual Terry Fox Run.
The Terry Fox Run is a non-competitive event where people get together as individuals, families, and groups to raise money for cancer research in Terry Fox’s name.
Terry Fox was born in Winnipeg in 1958, but moved to the lower mainland of B.C. with his family when he was a young child. In 1977, when he was 19 years old, Fox was diagnosed with osteosarcoma (also called osteogenic sarcoma), a bone cancer and had his right leg amputated 15 centimetres above the knee.
At the time, Fox was a long distance runner and a basketball player at Simon Fraser University. Three years later, Fox decided he would run across Canada in an effort to raise money and awareness for cancer research. On April 12, 1980 Fox dipped his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean in St. John’s Nfld. and set out on what he called his Marathon of Hope.
He ran an average of 42 kilometres (26 miles) a day through six provinces. After 143 days and 5,373 kilometres, Terry stopped running outside of Thunder Bay, Ont., because his primary cancer had spread to his lungs.
After being treated with chemotherapy and interferon, Fox died in New Westminster, B.C., on June 28, 1981.
On Sept. 13 of that same year the first Terry Fox Run was held at more than 760 sites in Canada and around the world. The event attracted 300,000 participants and raised $3.5 million. Today the run takes place in more than 9,000 communities across Canada.
Jacquie Hameon, a teacher at the Covenant Christian Reformed School, said every year the hamlet’s two schools join together to organize a Terry Fox Run.
“Most of the people that take part are students, but we are a close knit community and everyone is welcome to come and take part,” she said.
