Terry Fox is someone that is almost universally looked up to, admired, and cherished by Canadians from coast to coast, even though most of us didn t know him personally. Bill Viggers is the author of Terry and Me, the inside story of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope, which comes out in paperback on August 29th.
00:06:09.260So right from the beginning, also, the other thing I have to say, and he said this often to me and in public, he said, before I had this cancer, he said, I was pretty self-centered.
00:06:26.020And that operation and that inspiration that was given to him by Judith Ray changed him.
00:06:35.200And in the letter to Judith, he talks about how he's going to do this run, how he one of the things he ran five thousand three thousand miles.
00:06:45.440By the way, back then, we worked in miles.
00:06:47.460He ran three thousand miles before he started the run.
00:06:54.000And in his speeches, he would say dreams can come true if you want them to.
00:07:01.160What he often did not add, but he meant was if you do a lot of work.
00:07:06.340And that was the beginning of the journey for him.
00:07:11.560So how did the idea of running across the country come to him then?
00:07:18.460I mean, he got this inspiration from the nurse, Judith Ray.
00:07:22.580There's a big leap between that and saying, I'm going to fly to Newfoundland and run back to my home in Vancouver.
00:07:30.500Well, immediately he tells when he told his mother that he's going to run across Canada, because in his mind, people got cancer everywhere, not just in British Columbia.
00:07:40.800And mother says, why don't you just run across B.C.?
00:15:08.000Ken McQueen, who wrote for McLean's Magazine, interviewed Terry and us in Ottawa, and then came and joined us for a few days up near Sudbury.
00:15:17.020And he says, when he wrote, he said, I was expecting it to have changed into this organization.
00:15:24.900And he said they were still just like a bunch of bands of gypsies flying by the seat of their pants.
00:16:53.740If this thing doesn't, if you don't do something now, the run's not going to make it to Ontario.
00:16:59.480So I, once again, went to Mr. Rollins, and he called in some bunch of volunteers, and we called in volunteers from all across the province.
00:17:06.680And we had a meeting in the old Westbury Hotel basement, and I'm sitting there with my suitcase, and this is to decide whether we are going to get behind Terry Fox.
00:17:25.420They said they didn't have the volunteers, and I tried to explain to them, we don't need volunteers.
00:17:31.920It's a movement unto itself that just happens.
00:17:36.680But even up to the, at the end of that vote, Toronto was still not in.
00:17:42.180By the way, when we got to Toronto, I got a letter from them, which I still have all the papers, inviting me, please join us for Terry's arrival in Toronto.
00:17:53.140And I thought to write back to him, sorry, I can't make it that day, I'm busy.
00:17:57.920Because there was a complete disassociation from the national office to what was happening on the road.
00:18:04.840So he crosses the Ontario-Quebec border, and I'm guessing at that point, media in Ottawa, both local media in Ottawa, but also the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and people that wrote for national publications, probably started cluing in around then.
00:18:25.480He came across the border at Hawkesbury to greet him.
00:18:29.320And by the way, what happened was, a bunch of volunteers of the Cancer Society, some of them immediately said, this guy is different, we're going to do it.
00:18:40.000So some of them went way out of their way.
00:18:42.660One of them was a gentleman by the name of Terry Christopher, who's still around, who became the officer of the Black Rod in the Senate.
00:18:50.080And after that meeting in Toronto, him, he and the district director were driving back to Ottawa going, we're on our own.
00:18:59.020You know, nothing's going to happen if we don't do it.
00:19:01.520So what happened is, those two gentlemen, and a couple of other people, put together that greeting in Hawkesbury.
00:19:08.440And the turning point in my mind was, as we ran into Ottawa, we ran into Spark Street Mall.
00:19:17.200And it was lunchtime, it was naturally jammed, but it was the biggest crowd that Terry had run into.
00:19:21.820And my plan was, I said to him, I'd take a day off in Montreal, so we arrived in July the 1st, because my plan was to try and get him on the Canada Day celebrations at Parliament Hill.
00:19:36.280But that morning, we were approached by the PR person, a gentleman by the name of Richard Goetz, and asked Terry to kick off at the football game.
00:19:45.340So I went to Terry and said, look, I was going to take you to Parliament Hill.
00:19:56.880He's practicing downstairs, kicking the ball.
00:20:00.060He's afraid he's going to shank it or he's going to fall down.
00:20:02.920And then they said, the time is ready.
00:20:04.680And as we're walking out on the field, I'm thinking to myself, I hope they know who he is.
00:20:09.760And the announcer just said, ladies and gentlemen, and he wasn't at the, he was just getting to the sidelines, and he'd never get the words Terry Fox out.
00:20:17.400And the place started this unending standing ovation that went on and on and on.
00:20:27.060And then at center field, Jerry Organ and Tony Gabriel are talking to him.
00:20:33.980And one of them says, we were in the dressing room, the team, and we cannot believe what you're doing.
00:20:42.660Oh, you're running a marathon a day on one leg.
00:22:25.780We, you know, we had set it up with his office, actually.
00:22:29.800Mr. Christopher that I spoke about earlier had arranged it.
00:22:32.740And he had been overseas and he apparently in the house that day, he had taken a beating and he came out and obviously had not been briefed.
00:22:42.480He didn't know who Terry was, didn't know what he was doing, didn't know what direction he was running.
00:22:48.160And my kids at the time were eight and nine years old.
00:22:51.820And their pictures are in a lot of the books over the years.
00:22:56.180And they were squatted down in front of Terry.
00:22:59.080And at one point, Trudeau looks down at them and says, who are you?
00:23:04.000Well, these two kids, eight and nine, jump up and completely take over the conversation with Trudeau.
00:23:10.480And start telling Terry or Pierre where he's going, what he's doing, where they've been.
00:23:19.120And they don't, and basically they saved the day.
00:23:23.540And Terry wanted Trudeau to run with him, which he didn't.
00:23:48.900So, Bill, part of what I'm getting from talking to you is that my memory, such as it is of Terry Fox and the run, is better than I thought.
00:24:03.100I would have been not quite 10 years old.
00:24:06.400But they started talking to us about Terry Fox and school.
00:24:09.080And my memory seemed to be that it hadn't been that big groundswell all across the country, but it grew as the run progressed.
00:24:18.640And Toronto had to have been one of the high points for getting the word out, even though the Toronto, you know, branch of the Cancer Society wanted nothing to do with it.
00:24:28.060You had more than 10,000 people out at Nathan Phillips Square and Daryl Sittler running with them.
00:24:32.880When I came back from New Brunswick, the next morning, I'm driving down to the office.
00:27:44.620So most of the images that you see of Terry Fox, and she came up and joined us in French River, at the French River Trading Post, Gail shot.
00:27:53.360But the crowd, they estimated at 10,000 people.
00:27:57.640It was all the way back as far as you can, in every direction.
00:28:39.240And after that, by the way, when I first met him in New Brunswick, I said, for this thing to take off, we have to make a splash in Ottawa, and we have to make it big in Toronto, because that's where the national media was.
00:28:53.720It lit the fuse that made the rest of the country sit up and pay real attention.
00:29:06.660But London, Ontario was the next biggest crowd we ran into.
00:29:10.740And after that, everywhere for the rest of the run, everywhere we went, even out in the country, there was people lining the road.
00:29:20.140We put, you know, you get to a town, Brantford, you know, Woodstock, Kitchener, all that route, and then up to Barrie and Gravenhurst.
00:29:29.800If there was a town of 5,000 people, 10,000 people showed up.
00:29:35.080And the response in every community was incredible.
00:29:39.620And the support that we got, too, by the way.
00:29:41.580We very rarely paid for a dinner, and very rarely did we have to pay for a motel room, too.
00:29:47.340And you mentioned leaving the Four Seasons.
00:29:50.140There was, I mean, there weren't a lot of Four Seasons across the country, but there was a connection to Isidore Sharp, the founder of the hotel chain, right?
00:30:00.180Mr. Sharp had a son, who's Terry's age, who had just passed away before Terry started his run from the same type of cancer.
00:30:09.920And when he was in Quebec, he pledged, first off, he said, I'm going to put you up in wherever we have a hotel, you're going to stay there.
00:30:19.120In Montreal, as an example, the night before, we stayed in a convent and little tiny rooms like cells with a cot and a desk.
00:30:28.940And the next day, we all have our own suites at the Four Seasons in Montreal.
00:30:33.300We got our T-shirts and shorts back on hangers starched.
00:30:39.300And then he pledged $2 for every mile that Terry ran, and he challenged 1,000 companies in Canada to join him.
00:30:55.020And he has been a staunch supporter of the Terry Fox.
00:31:00.880He was the originator of the Terry Fox Foundation, working with mom and dad.
00:31:06.220And he's been the chairman of the board.
00:31:08.820He's now retired for all of these years.
00:31:11.000And from the beginning, Mr. Sharp was number one supporter of Terry Fox.
00:31:21.760It's just an amazing story, the legacy that's gone on.
00:31:26.580But I don't want to leave his time in Toronto yet.
00:31:29.500I don't want to make it all about Toronto.
00:32:18.240Now he's changed into his shirt and shoes.
00:32:20.860And he goes, opens the door and just to Terry and goes, okay, who wants to go for a run?
00:32:25.780And then, and by the way, Daryl stayed in touch with Terry all through his illness, as did Orr, as did Gretzky, as did a lot of those sports people, stayed in touch with him.
00:32:41.680And the NHL Players Association offered to finish his run.
00:32:45.720And Terry said, no, nobody's going to finish my run.
00:32:48.740And then Bobby Orr, Terry was a big Boston fan.
00:32:53.620And then meeting Orr was a big thrill.
00:32:56.540We actually came back and Terry spoke to a bunch of business leaders at the Four Seasons.
00:33:01.060And then we had dinner with Orr, just the five of us.
00:33:06.020And when Bobby goes to the washroom, Terry starts picking the croutons off of his salad going, I'm going to tell my grandkids that I ate Bobby Orr's croutons.
00:33:17.480So, by the way, I have to tell you that when I have a chance, Terry had an incredible sense of humor, very dry, quick, quick thinker.
00:33:31.280When he, we thought he had broken his ankle up in Sault Ste. Marie, it turned out it wasn't.
00:33:36.680By the time he's walking out of the hospital, some media had gathered out front and a bunch of reporters standing there.
00:33:44.000And one of them yells to Terry, Terry, which one of your ankles is bothering you?
00:33:48.400And without missing a beat, he looks at the guy and he says, the one I don't have.
00:33:55.680And there's a couple of other times like that, too.
00:33:59.200So, I remember him coming to Hamilton and to Dundas.
00:34:02.180And then you've described all these towns that he went to in London and Brantford.
00:34:06.120That is not a direct route across Canada.
00:34:09.360I mean, a direct route would have been coming across at Hawkesbury, at the Ontario-Quebec border, and running Highway 17 and 60 up to Thunder Bay.
00:36:51.340When – I was actually at my parents' 40th wedding anniversary and didn't get back the next morning until I arrived at the same time as mom and dad had arrived from B.C.
00:37:00.040And we all went to the hospital and mom and dad went into the room first and then after me and Terry looked at me and told me, you know, I got the cancer, I got to go home.
00:37:11.500So I went into – actually, my first three words were words that I can't repeat and I'm not very proud of.
00:38:25.980And it was very funny because Lou's on the phone with this person and explaining we need a flight and we need you to fly up and pick him up and fly him home.
00:38:35.540And it starts going up the line of, you know, authority and finally gets to the top person who says, we can't possibly do that.
00:38:44.180And Lou goes, I've got all the media outside the door of Canada.
00:38:48.440Do you want me to go out there right now and tell them the government of Ontario would not fly Terry Fox home?
00:38:54.64030 seconds later, they come back on and go, there'll be a plane there in an hour and a half.
00:39:03.860So you basically embarrass the head of Ontario's health system, OHIP, into getting you a plane by saying, look, either you give us a plane to fly Terry home or we're going to go tell all the media.
00:39:23.180The next thing we load into the ambulance and in the ambulance is mom and dad and myself, a doctor from Thunder Bay and Christy Blatchford, who's from the Toronto Star, who had already visited us once before and had a relationship with Terry.
00:39:44.240And as we're driving to the airport, needless to say, mom and dad are very upset.
00:39:48.340And dad starts going, this is so unfair.
00:40:08.800And then he says, maybe now people will understand more why I did it.
00:40:14.760And what he felt was that people had put him up on this pedestal of being a hero and that for him, it was all about cancer and finding a cure.
00:40:28.800And he realized that because of the visibility he had become, that people were now going to follow his treatment and his journey, which is chemotherapy and radiation.
00:40:43.780And he, which is, that's what motivated him in the run in the first place, watching little kids dealing with cancer.
00:40:52.400So he realized that people were now going to understand more about why he did it.
00:41:00.420We get to the airport and we unload him and we get him in the plane and I hug mom and dad and I go over and I hug Terry and I told him I loved him.
00:41:11.140And then the door closed and the plane taxis.
00:41:20.940And I remember standing there thinking, this isn't the way the movie is supposed to end.
00:41:26.680And, and somebody calls me, taps me and says, you want it in the, in the inside.
00:41:33.300And I pick up the phone and I'm doing an interview as it happens.
00:41:38.760And then the next day I have to unload the vans.
00:41:42.840And the only thing, I think the only save of my sanity that week was when I got back to Toronto the next day, I got called over to the CTV headquarters and they were going to put together the telethon.
00:41:56.160And they, they asked me to help them tell them who Terry was.
00:42:01.460Um, so I sat there and they go, look, who did he like as a musician?
00:42:05.820I'd say, well, John Denver, uh, you know, like country music and they'd get, get John Denver on the telephone.
00:42:12.580So I sat there and watched that telethon come together.
00:42:17.000And at the end of the day, um, the producer turned to me and said, where are you going to be Sunday?
00:42:23.580And he said, do you want to go to be with Terry?
00:42:27.060And they flew me out and, um, Terry and I watched the telethon together in his hospital room.
00:42:32.520And, um, they rolled in the, uh, the, the, the drugs and, uh, plugged them up or hooked them up.
00:42:40.640And he started his first chemo treatment when I was sitting there and he fell asleep on my shoulder.
00:42:45.360$10 million raised in that, uh, telethon.
00:42:49.340And by the time he paid passed away, he reached the 24 million.
00:42:53.660That was the population of Canada at that time.
00:42:56.180So before he passed away, um, he reached his goal and he said a couple of times in interviews, um, I'm, I'm going to die happy because I, I did the best I can.
00:43:59.700Um, and I credit the school system and the teachers for keeping Terry's legacy alive of using Terry as an example of community involvement, um, of selflessness, of contributing, of being kind.
00:44:16.980Um, and then they can use them in so many different ways, science and geography and, um, the, the, the run spread around the road.
00:44:27.000My, my son, who's now 51 teaches in China.
00:44:30.120And a few years ago, I went to visit him and he was sick and he was supposed to go to the run in Guangzhou with his students.
00:44:37.100So he said, dad, you have to go with him.
00:44:39.020So I get on the bullet train with 116 or 116 year olds, just like anywhere in Canada.
00:44:45.240They're running around the hotel to five o'clock in the morning and have to get up at seven for a run.
00:44:49.180And we go to the high end golf course in Guangzhou and I've nothing, no, once again, no idea what to expect.
00:44:57.840And for about a mile, there's buses and buses and buses, but they let us off and we go in the, it's on a driving range is where it's going to start.
00:45:07.220And we're on the second level and the governor of the province is there, the mayor, uh, business executives, politicians, and I'm up there and I'm looking out at 8,000 Chinese kids wearing the same Terry Fox shirt that was in Canada that year, except in Chinese writing.
00:45:26.960And I thought to myself, Terry would never believe what his legacy became, that it spread around the world.
00:45:35.740And at one point there was 64 year, 64 runs around the world.
00:45:40.700A lot of them are initiated by the Canadian armed forces, expats.
00:45:45.820Um, there's new, actually just new runs now in New Zealand and Australia and the one in England, which there's now three and they keep getting bigger.
00:45:55.360Um, and then the school runs every year, the school runs, you know, kids learn about Terry.
00:46:01.100And that's another thing I hope about the, the, the book that people will learn more about Terry, the person, um, and that he was, you know, he said it himself, but it is true.
00:47:10.380The money is raised by the foundation, but then it goes to the Terry Fox research Institute, which is the medical arm.
00:47:17.440And they do all the money off to researchers and they are connected with researchers all around the world.
00:47:23.520Um, one of the things they're working on right now is a very rare type of childhood brain cancer.
00:47:29.060Um, which right now there is no cure, but that's, they put a focus on that one.
00:47:34.620And then there's a new program where they have connected all of the research projects all across Canada so that everybody is sharing information on what they're doing.
00:47:45.920Um, and that's Princess Margaret is part of that.
00:47:48.920And all of the major cancer research places across Canada are part of that.
00:47:53.620And it's all organized by the Terry Fox Research Foundation.
00:47:59.060Bill Vigar's book is called Terry and me, the inside story of Terry Fox's marathon of hope.
00:48:04.180And it comes out August 29th, highly recommend it.
00:48:07.580And Bill, thanks for a great chat today and insights into a man that you feel like, you know, but of course I never did.