Terry Fox (1958 - 1981)

The Terry Fox Foundation

Terry Fox Biography

Terrance Stanley "Terry" Fox, CC (July 28, 1958 – June 28, 1981) was a Canadian humanitarian, athlete, and cancer treatment activist. He became famous for the Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research, which Fox ran with one prosthetic leg. He is considered one of Canada's greatest heroes of the 20th century and is celebrated internationally every September as people participate in the Terry Fox Run, the world's largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research.



On November 12, 1976, Fox was driving back home along Port Coquitlam's highway in his green 1968 Ford Cortina. He was distracted by a bridge construction site, and his car slammed into a half-ton truck. Nothing happened to the driver or the truck, and Fox came out of the accident with only a sore right knee.
In 1977, after feeling pain in his right knee, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. This is a form of cancer that strikes men more than women, usually around ages ten to twenty-five. Very often the cancer starts at the knee, then works its way up into the muscles and tendons. At the time, the only way to treat his condition was to amputate his right leg several inches above the knee.
In June of 1981, Terry developed pneumonia, and on June 27 he went into a coma. He died on the 28th at 4:35 am which was his favourite hour of running, a year after his legendary run, exactly one month shy of his twenty-third birthday.
Terry's funeral was large and was broadcast live on national television. He is buried in the Port Coquitlam cemetery, near his favourite lookout just outside the cemetery gates.

The running I can do, even if I have to crawl every last mile.

We need your help. The people in cancer clinics all over the world need people who believe in miracles.

I am not a dreamer, and I am not saying that this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer. But I believe in miracles. I have to.

Terry Fox, October 1979