Terry Fox

He was twenty-one years old, running on one leg, and he had cancer. On April 12, 1980, Terry Fox dipped his artificial right leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland, and began running west. His plan was simple and impossible: cross Canada on foot to raise money for cancer research. He called it the Marathon of Hope.

Fox had lost his leg to osteosarcoma three years earlier. In the hospital, watching other cancer patients suffer and die, he decided that if he survived, he would do something about it. "I'm not a dreamer," he said. "And I'm not saying this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer. But I believe in miracles. I have to."

The Hop and Skip Mechanics

Terry’s run was a mechanical feat as much as a physical one. He used a prosthesis designed by British Columbia prosthetist Ben Speicher. Known as the "Speicher Leg," it was a construct of fiberglass and steel weighing approximately 4 kilograms—double the weight of modern high-performance running blades.

The "hop and skip" gait that became Terry's trademark was born of mechanical necessity. The heavy steel springs in his artificial knee required extra time to reset after each step. To compensate for this "slow swing phase," Terry had to take two hops on his good leg for every one step on the prosthetic. Doctors predicted the gait would cause his joints to fail within weeks. Instead, he maintained it for 143 consecutive marathons.

The Human Element

While the world saw a solitary runner, the Marathon of Hope was a team effort defined by grit and friction. His best friend, Doug Alward, drove the Ford Econoline van that served as their mobile base. Their relationship was the mission's backbone, though it was often strained to the breaking point by exhaustion. By the time they reached Quebec, they were barely on speaking terms, requiring Terry’s younger brother Darrell to join the crew as a mediator.

It was Isadore Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons Hotels, who turned the quixotic run into a national movement. Sharp, who had lost his own son to melanoma, pledged $10,000 and challenged 999 other corporations to do the same. When Terry was forced to stop near Thunder Bay, it was Sharp who sent the telegram promising that the run would continue every year until a cure was found.