Full Comment - The amazing story of Terry Fox you haven’t heard

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00:00:50.160 Few Canadians have inspired a nation quite like Terry Fox.

00:00:55.000 Terry Fox is someone that is almost universally looked up to, admired.

00:01:00.000 Um, cherished by Canadians from coast to coast, even though most of us never met him.

00:01:05.480 Most of us didn't know him personally.

00:01:07.640 Hello, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:01:08.840 This is the full comment podcast.

00:01:10.500 Our next guest is someone who knew Terry Fox very well.

00:01:13.600 Worked closely with him on his marathon of hope in 1980.

00:01:16.340 And someone who has a new book coming out just ahead of the Terry Fox, uh, marathon or run that comes up every September.

00:01:24.860 But before we get to him, I do want to remind you, hit that subscribe button, whatever app or device you're listening to is on.

00:01:30.900 Hit that subscribe button.

00:01:32.020 Make sure you don't miss an episode of full comment.

00:01:35.400 So, what was Terry Fox like?

00:01:38.580 How did he begin his marathon of hope?

00:01:41.060 Why did he begin it?

00:01:42.480 And what was it like on the road?

00:01:44.560 Bill Viggers is the author of Terry and Me, the inside story of Terry Fox's marathon of hope.

00:01:49.360 Comes out in paperback on August 29th.

00:01:52.400 Make sure you look out for it.

00:01:53.880 Order it online.

00:01:54.940 Or pick it up at a local bookstore.

00:01:57.240 Even better yet.

00:01:58.460 Bill joins me now.

00:01:59.380 Bill, thanks for the time today.

00:02:00.420 Thank you very much.

00:02:01.540 And thank you for having me here.

00:02:05.680 Are you, all these years later, are you surprised that Terry Fox still inspires so many people straight across the country?

00:02:15.840 No, not really.

00:02:16.820 I think his message is going to resonate today as strong as it did 43 years ago.

00:02:23.860 And I can see it going on forever.

00:02:27.120 Or at least I hope it goes on forever.

00:02:29.480 Because he set such an example for people.

00:02:34.280 His journey was, I don't know how he did it.

00:02:39.780 And I think that a lot of people look back on it.

00:02:42.660 And how did somebody possibly do that in one leg?

00:02:45.900 And he exemplifies so many good traits in the human beings that I think we all admire and I think aspire to.

00:02:55.380 So you weren't with him at the very beginning of the Marathon of Hope.

00:03:00.420 You later joined and helped organize things.

00:03:03.280 But before we get to what it was like and where you joined him, tell me Terry's story.

00:03:09.600 There's a whole generation, two, of Canadians who weren't alive then, who have no memory of this.

00:03:16.600 They've definitely heard of Terry Fox in school and media and so on.

00:03:20.540 But how did he end up where he was in terms of being so dedicated to raising money for cancer?

00:03:29.460 Obviously, he dealt with it himself.

00:03:30.940 But how did he end up where he was to the point of saying, I'm going to run across Canada?

00:03:35.560 As a youngster, he was always an athlete, soccer, basketball.

00:03:42.300 When he was 17, he was in a minor car accident and injured his knee.

00:03:48.140 And shortly thereafter, he started having some pain in that knee.

00:03:53.120 And he just worked through it.

00:03:55.360 And it went on for months until he would have been 18 when the pain in his knee became just too much.

00:04:08.360 And he went to see a doctor.

00:04:09.680 On that very first visit to a doctor, there was x-rayed and almost immediately, not almost immediately,

00:04:19.300 immediately diagnosed that he had osteosarcoma, which is cancer of the bone in his knee.

00:04:25.820 And within 48 hours, he had the lower part of his knee just be just above or actually was just above the knee amputated.

00:04:41.660 In the book, there is a letter written by Terry in January of 1980 before he starts his run to his nurse.

00:04:52.380 The nurse is Judith Ray, who dealt with him in the hospital and the family.

00:04:57.880 And the night before he had his operation, she gave him this peps talk about don't let this ruin your life.

00:05:06.900 Make something out of it.

00:05:08.100 Do something to make a change.

00:05:10.640 And also that night, his coach came in with an article in a magazine saying,

00:05:18.860 there's this gentleman who ran in the New York Marathon with one leg.

00:05:23.860 And Terry said immediately, well, if that old fart can do that, I can do it.

00:05:30.240 And within very shortly after getting out of the hospital, he was walking around. 0.89

00:05:37.660 By the way, in the hospital, the nurse talks about how much how caring he was to the other people.

00:05:44.300 And by the way, they put him in the kid's ward.

00:05:46.920 The doctor said, I don't want to put him in the in the in the with the adults.

00:05:52.720 And the nurse said, that's a really good idea because they were mostly there with broken bones from falls.

00:05:58.060 So he was in with a bunch of kids.

00:05:59.540 They would have been seniors.

00:06:00.520 He may have been a senior kid.

00:06:02.480 Yes.

00:06:03.040 In the adult section, he would have been with people close to your age now, perhaps.

00:06:08.440 No, my age.

00:06:09.260 So 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.

00:06:23.300 I only worried about myself.

00:06:24.680 I only worried about sports.

00:06:26.020 And that operation and that inspiration that was given to him by Judith Ray changed him.

00:06:35.200 And 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.

00:06:45.440 By the way, back then, we worked in miles.

00:06:47.460 He ran three thousand miles before he started the run.

00:06:54.000 And in his speeches, he would say dreams can come true if you want them to.

00:07:01.160 What he often did not add, but he meant was if you do a lot of work.

00:07:06.340 And that was the beginning of the journey for him.

00:07:11.560 So how did the idea of running across the country come to him then?

00:07:18.460 I mean, he got this inspiration from the nurse, Judith Ray.

00:07:22.580 There's a big leap between that and saying, I'm going to fly to Newfoundland and run back to my home in Vancouver.

00:07:30.500 Well, 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.

00:07:40.800 And mother says, why don't you just run across B.C.?

00:07:44.060 And that was his answer.

00:07:45.580 He said, because people get cancer everywhere.

00:07:48.920 And I have to spread the message.

00:07:51.200 And from the beginning, it was solely to raise money for research.

00:07:56.940 At one point, I had a little chat with him on the road about you want to put some of your money into education.

00:08:02.140 And he was emphatic that everything that he would raise would go to find a cure for the disease.

00:08:11.300 As he said, there has to be a better way.

00:08:13.460 And he saw the treatment that people were going through.

00:08:16.460 And by the way, the type of cancer he has had, you now have an 80 percent chance of survival.

00:08:22.820 And in most cases, they do not have to do an amputation.

00:08:25.800 So from the beginning, he was inspired to do that run across Canada.

00:08:30.940 He was not satisfied for just running across B.C.

00:08:35.520 When the Marathon of Hope started in April 1980, though, it did not generate the kind of publicity that it later did.

00:08:48.200 How did it change?

00:08:49.700 At the beginning, it was just him and Doug in that van.

00:08:55.040 And they started off from St. John's.

00:08:59.120 And in Port of Basque, there was a town of 8,000 people at the time.

00:09:03.460 And they raised $8,000.

00:09:05.160 That's when he got the idea of $1 from every Canadian.

00:09:08.360 By the time he got to Nova Scotia, he was getting discouraged because his message was not getting out.

00:09:16.520 And people today are still doing that.

00:09:18.780 And what they don't understand is if you don't have a way to get your message out to the people, you end up running an anonymity.

00:09:26.340 And what happened was the first time I talked to him, it was in Sheet Harbor, Nova Scotia.

00:09:33.720 By the way, at the beginning, I want to make clear, this is long before cell phones and the Internet.

00:09:40.920 So how we communicated back then was by pay phones.

00:09:45.400 So he would call collect.

00:09:46.960 And the very first time I talked to him, I could tell how discouraged he was.

00:09:52.920 And you'd met him before the run started, correct?

00:09:55.920 No, no.

00:09:56.560 Oh, okay.

00:09:57.400 No, what happened was is he was just about to start the run.

00:10:03.520 I had just been hired by the Cancer Society.

00:10:07.060 Quite frankly, I had been in a down and out stage of my life selling life insurance, which is a wonderful product that most people have.

00:10:15.320 But I was not a salesman and should have never been doing that.

00:10:18.860 But I'd always been a volunteer with the Cancer Society, and I applied for one job with it.

00:10:23.500 I didn't get it.

00:10:24.200 It's in the book.

00:10:24.960 It's an interesting story.

00:10:26.860 But then I applied for the job as the director of communications and fundraising at the Ontario Division.

00:10:33.400 And the day before he was to start, my boss, a gentleman by the name of Harry Rollins, came to my desk and said,

00:10:39.980 there's a kid with one leg going to run across Canada.

00:10:42.760 Do you want to go and see what you can do for him?

00:10:45.320 So initially, I just followed him in the Toronto Star.

00:10:51.280 Leslie Scrivener was writing about him once a week in Section 4, probably page 8.

00:10:57.860 And that was basically the amount of press he was getting.

00:11:02.700 And so when I talked to him that first time, I said, when you get to Ontario, what do you want to do?

00:11:07.580 And he said, well, I'd like to meet Bobby Orr.

00:11:10.220 I want to meet Daryl Sittler.

00:11:12.340 I want to go to Puget's game.

00:11:14.020 I want to meet Trudeau.

00:11:15.660 And I want to go to the CN Tower.

00:11:18.060 And, of course, I had just moved from Welland, Ontario.

00:11:20.300 And I'm sitting at the other end of the line just to move to the big city.

00:11:23.660 And I'm thinking, I don't know if I'm OK.

00:11:26.100 I said, call me back tomorrow and I'll see what I can do.

00:11:29.840 And the worst thing that anybody can say to you is no.

00:11:33.440 So I just got on the phone.

00:11:34.840 And by the time he was able to call me back the next day, I was able to say, OK, the CN Tower is on.

00:11:40.220 The Blue Jays are on.

00:11:42.400 Sittler is going to meet you.

00:11:43.520 Bobby Orr is going to be in Europe, but we'll find him someplace on the road.

00:11:47.320 He'll find us.

00:11:48.200 And I can't find Trudeau, who was in Europe at the time.

00:11:52.100 And when we did meet him, was not even briefed about him.

00:11:54.460 But that's another story.

00:11:56.240 It turned out OK.

00:11:57.080 OK, so right away, I wanted to give him hope, you know, that things were going to happen.

00:12:05.700 Then I flew down, met him in Edmondson, New Brunswick.

00:12:09.420 That's when I found out who he was.

00:12:11.020 I was actually sent down to lay down the law because he wasn't showing up for his medical treatments.

00:12:18.600 Or not treatments, just the exams that he had promised to do.

00:12:22.800 Well, Mom and Dad had already been there to talk to him.

00:12:25.040 And he was, he was, I'm not going to stop running to go get exams.

00:12:29.160 I said, I know my body.

00:12:30.380 If I need something, I'll go to a doctor.

00:12:32.300 So when I get there, I get to meet him.

00:12:34.920 I meet him the first morning.

00:12:36.920 I am in absolute awe.

00:12:39.680 I, like everybody else, I'm watching the response of the people on the side of the road.

00:12:46.240 There's nobody there.

00:12:48.500 There's every time a home hardware truck passed him, they would honk.

00:12:51.860 So somehow somebody back in Ontario knew about him.

00:12:55.040 But other than that, there was no coverage.

00:12:57.340 There was very, like a little bit of press here, a little bit of press there.

00:13:01.500 And I saw how he affected people.

00:13:04.000 I saw when he spoke that it was complete silence in the crowd.

00:13:11.160 He spoke from the heart.

00:13:13.040 He was for real.

00:13:14.580 He was just a regular kid, a wonderful sense of humor.

00:13:22.200 And I knew that if he got into a populated area, it would take off.

00:13:27.260 So when I left him at the Quebec border, I already knew nothing was going to happen there.

00:13:32.780 And I said, just get through Quebec.

00:13:35.320 I said, get to Ontario and we'll make it happen.

00:13:39.080 And then I went back to Ontario and I drove back and forth between Toronto and went to all those little towns, Caladar and Marmara.

00:13:48.680 And I would go to the Little Women's Institute.

00:13:51.160 I would drive into town to the gas station and ask, who in town is the event organizer?

00:13:56.040 And they go, oh, see, Martha down the road.

00:13:57.680 And I'd go and talk to them.

00:14:00.420 And they were the Lions Club president.

00:14:02.120 And I'd say, I had two Polaroid pictures of him.

00:14:05.480 And that's all I had.

00:14:06.880 And I said, this guy's running across Canada with one leg.

00:14:09.540 Would you do something for him when he comes to your town?

00:14:11.760 And they all said the same thing.

00:14:12.880 Well, if he makes it this far, we'll do something.

00:14:15.400 And I said, he'll be here.

00:14:16.940 And as a matter of fact, he and I had sat down with a map out in New Brunswick.

00:14:20.440 And because he was running 25 miles a day, I was able to go 25, 25, 25.

00:14:24.640 So I was able to tell these people that, okay, he's going to be here on July the 13th, as an example.

00:14:31.240 And by the way, by the time we got to Sault Ste.

00:14:33.280 We were only two days behind that schedule.

00:14:36.740 So can I just stop you for a second, Joe?

00:14:41.540 You said earlier that this was done in the days before cell phones, before the internet.

00:14:47.860 And so you're doing this with pay phones.

00:14:50.340 You're flying and driving to meet them.

00:14:54.640 You're mapping it out with just a map and math.

00:14:58.260 I don't think most people could do that today.

00:15:01.420 Well, it was, there was no rules.

00:15:04.760 You flew by the seat of your pants.

00:15:08.000 Ken 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.

00:15:17.020 And he says, when he wrote, he said, I was expecting it to have changed into this organization.

00:15:24.900 And he said they were still just like a bunch of bands of gypsies flying by the seat of their pants. 0.94

00:15:31.040 And that's how the run was.

00:15:33.520 You couldn't plan the day-to-day run because it could change in a moment.

00:15:40.300 He could come to me and say, okay, I'm supposed to run 12 miles, but I got to take a break now.

00:15:45.540 So how we communicated back then was radio.

00:15:49.260 Radio was king in 1980.

00:15:52.560 By the time we got to Ontario, you know, the radio cruisers would join us.

00:15:57.440 So when he had to stop early, I would go over to the radio station guys and say, okay, he's got to take two hours off.

00:16:03.760 You'll be back on the road.

00:16:04.980 So they would immediately broadcast what Terry's schedule.

00:16:08.160 And that was how we communicated.

00:16:10.180 There was, as I say, you couldn't do it.

00:16:12.280 You know, today it would have been easy back then, but it worked.

00:16:16.060 You didn't get a lot of publicity in Quebec, by the sounds of it.

00:16:19.800 No.

00:16:21.080 So when did it pick up?

00:16:23.680 The moment he crossed the Ontario border.

00:16:25.640 Now, there is a lot of politics within the Cancer Society, and a lot of it was based on personalities.

00:16:33.440 So I get a call from the gentleman who was doing the documentary when Terry's in Montreal or in Quebec City.

00:16:41.200 Sunday night.

00:16:41.920 I always seem to get the calls on Sunday nights.

00:16:44.040 And he says, they've run out of money.

00:16:48.140 They all have colds.

00:16:49.720 They haven't had a shower in a week.

00:16:52.000 I put them up in a motel.

00:16:53.740 If this thing doesn't, if you don't do something now, the run's not going to make it to Ontario.

00:16:59.480 So 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.

00:17:06.680 And 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.

00:17:18.520 And this is the Ontario Division.

00:17:20.620 The Hamilton and the Toronto districts did not want anything to do with them.

00:17:24.620 Really?

00:17:25.420 They said they didn't have the volunteers, and I tried to explain to them, we don't need volunteers.

00:17:31.920 It's a movement unto itself that just happens.

00:17:36.680 But even up to the, at the end of that vote, Toronto was still not in.

00:17:42.180 By 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.

00:17:53.140 And I thought to write back to him, sorry, I can't make it that day, I'm busy.

00:17:57.920 Because there was a complete disassociation from the national office to what was happening on the road.

00:18:04.840 So 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.

00:18:22.680 It was slow.

00:18:25.480 He came across the border at Hawkesbury to greet him.

00:18:29.320 And 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.

00:18:40.000 So some of them went way out of their way.

00:18:42.660 One 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.

00:18:50.080 And after that meeting in Toronto, him, he and the district director were driving back to Ottawa going, we're on our own.

00:18:59.020 You know, nothing's going to happen if we don't do it.

00:19:01.520 So what happened is, those two gentlemen, and a couple of other people, put together that greeting in Hawkesbury.

00:19:08.440 And the turning point in my mind was, as we ran into Ottawa, we ran into Spark Street Mall.

00:19:17.200 And it was lunchtime, it was naturally jammed, but it was the biggest crowd that Terry had run into.

00:19:21.820 And 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.

00:19:36.280 But 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.

00:19:45.340 So I went to Terry and said, look, I was going to take you to Parliament Hill.

00:19:48.480 Nothing's guaranteed.

00:19:49.640 These guys want you to do the kickoff.

00:19:51.240 He said, I'd rather go to a football game.

00:19:54.080 And we go to the football game.

00:19:56.880 He's practicing downstairs, kicking the ball.

00:20:00.060 He's afraid he's going to shank it or he's going to fall down.

00:20:02.920 And then they said, the time is ready.

00:20:04.680 And as we're walking out on the field, I'm thinking to myself, I hope they know who he is.

00:20:09.760 And 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.

00:20:17.400 And the place started this unending standing ovation that went on and on and on.

00:20:27.060 And then at center field, Jerry Organ and Tony Gabriel are talking to him.

00:20:33.980 And one of them says, we were in the dressing room, the team, and we cannot believe what you're doing.

00:20:42.660 Oh, you're running a marathon a day on one leg.

00:20:44.980 We're professional athletes.

00:20:46.700 And we could never, ever do that.

00:20:49.820 And for Terry, that meant the world.

00:20:53.200 And they were recognizing what he was doing as an athletic feat.

00:20:56.320 And that meant so much to him.

00:20:58.100 So you said earlier, he was very athletic, very into sports.

00:21:02.740 And you've got two of the biggest star athletes in Canada at the time.

00:21:06.760 You know, CFL was a lot bigger back then.

00:21:08.540 And Tony Gabriel standing there complimenting you.

00:21:11.180 That must have just sent him over the moon.

00:21:14.200 Yeah, and one of the other things I remember is standing behind them on both teams are three giant linebackers, six altogether.

00:21:23.560 And every one of them, there's tears running down their face.

00:21:27.640 And I will never forget that moment.

00:21:29.940 And then every athlete we met after that said the same thing.

00:21:32.900 Daryl Sittler, Bobby Orr, Gretzky, all of them became friends of Terry's.

00:21:37.380 And all of them said to him, you know, basically the same thing.

00:21:41.800 And, you know, at the end of the run, you know, there were schools being named after him in the streets.

00:21:47.320 And all of them, he was very honored.

00:21:49.420 But the only one he ever really got excited about, he called me in December.

00:21:52.660 And he was just over the moon because he had just been named the Canadian athlete of the year.

00:22:00.540 And to him, that meant more than anything else.

00:22:04.500 Wow.

00:22:04.660 He didn't, he was never, ever, ever comfortable being considered a hero.

00:22:08.980 I want to ask you about the big reception in Toronto and then where things went from there.

00:22:14.240 But before I do, Trudeau, you said you just bumped into him somewhere and he wasn't briefed.

00:22:20.140 Was that on his visit through Ottawa?

00:22:23.540 Yes, it was actually a plan.

00:22:25.780 We, you know, we had set it up with his office, actually.

00:22:29.800 Mr. Christopher that I spoke about earlier had arranged it.

00:22:32.740 And 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.

00:22:42.480 He didn't know who Terry was, didn't know what he was doing, didn't know what direction he was running.

00:22:48.160 And my kids at the time were eight and nine years old.

00:22:51.820 And their pictures are in a lot of the books over the years.

00:22:56.180 And they were squatted down in front of Terry.

00:22:59.080 And at one point, Trudeau looks down at them and says, who are you?

00:23:04.000 Well, these two kids, eight and nine, jump up and completely take over the conversation with Trudeau.

00:23:10.480 And start telling Terry or Pierre where he's going, what he's doing, where they've been.

00:23:19.120 And they don't, and basically they saved the day.

00:23:23.540 And Terry wanted Trudeau to run with him, which he didn't.

00:23:27.140 But Terry always took the high road.

00:23:29.160 He said in his book, in his diary, he said he was a very nice man.

00:23:34.140 I wish he had a run with me, but, you know, he's very busy.

00:23:37.000 All right.

00:23:37.740 We've got to take a break, Bill.

00:23:39.500 I'm loving the conversation, but we've got to take a break.

00:23:41.820 And when we come back, I'll ask you about Toronto, the end of the run, and then the legacy.

00:23:46.640 More of that when we come back.

00:23:48.900 So, 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.

00:23:59.820 Because I was young at the time.

00:24:03.100 I would have been not quite 10 years old.

00:24:06.400 But they started talking to us about Terry Fox and school.

00:24:09.080 And my memory seemed to be that it hadn't been that big groundswell all across the country, but it grew as the run progressed.

00:24:18.640 And 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.

00:24:28.060 You had more than 10,000 people out at Nathan Phillips Square and Daryl Sittler running with them.

00:24:32.880 When I came back from New Brunswick, the next morning, I'm driving down to the office.

00:24:38.840 The office was at Bloor & Young.

00:24:40.540 And I used to listen to a gentleman by the name of Jeremy Brown, who was at a five-minute piece on CKFM with Don Daynard.

00:24:49.460 And it was about the entertainment business.

00:24:51.260 And he was always very funny.

00:24:52.680 But that morning, he talked about Terry Fox, and he wasn't being funny.

00:24:57.620 And his wife had read Leslie's column and said, I think you have to read this column.

00:25:03.760 I think you have to do something.

00:25:05.600 So he went on the air that morning, and he said, I'm going to get behind Terry Fox, and I'm going to get the station behind him.

00:25:13.100 And I'm coming down the Rosedale Valley Road, and instead of driving to my office, I drive up to the studio, buzz the back door.

00:25:20.560 He comes down.

00:25:21.420 We have coffee.

00:25:22.340 I show him the two Polaroid pictures.

00:25:24.020 I tell him all about Terry.

00:25:25.600 And he said, can you come back at 4 o'clock this afternoon?

00:25:28.340 I went back at 4 to the station.

00:25:30.600 And he had all of the management from the station.

00:25:34.820 He had a gentleman by the name of Quentin Wall, who owned Cadet Cleaners, Jackie Creed from the Creed family.

00:25:40.900 The owner of Pizza Pizza.

00:25:44.020 I did my talk about Terry, and at the end of the meeting, they said, we'll take care of Toronto.

00:25:50.360 You take care of Ontario.

00:25:52.600 So up until we're running down University Ave, I had no idea what was happening.

00:26:00.640 All I knew is we left the Four Seasons Hotel, and as we went down University Ave, on either side of the street, it's lined with people.

00:26:08.560 You know, in all the doorways and the windows you're looking up.

00:26:13.020 And it was, it was, the shock isn't the right word.

00:26:19.520 You were just full of holy mackerel. 0.81

00:26:21.620 I can't believe this.

00:26:23.020 And we made that turn at Queen and University Ave.

00:26:27.060 And Doug is driving.

00:26:31.460 Doug was his very best friend.

00:26:33.220 And there's no place to park, and the people are out on the street.

00:26:38.180 And he yells at them, what do I do?

00:26:39.400 What do I do with the truck?

00:26:40.220 And I said, just pull it up on the sidewalk.

00:26:42.020 And he said, I can't.

00:26:43.000 And I said, we're with Terry.

00:26:44.440 We can do anything we want.

00:26:45.480 At which point, the cop yells at him, put it there.

00:26:48.920 Put it there.

00:26:49.840 So we walk, or he's trying to make his way through the crowd.

00:26:54.400 And what happened was, is people were trying to hand him flowers and gifts and trying to touch him and shake his hand.

00:27:02.300 And the police were trying to make their way through.

00:27:06.320 In Scarborough, there was a big crowd there.

00:27:08.380 And at one point, the police started pushing people.

00:27:10.520 And Terry grabbed me by the arm and went, no, no, no, no.

00:27:12.860 Tell them it's okay.

00:27:13.620 It's okay.

00:27:14.120 And so by this time, the police are being very gentle with the people.

00:27:19.600 And what happens is, I turn around and start walking backwards.

00:27:23.620 And they're handing him stuff.

00:27:25.460 And then Terry's handing it to me.

00:27:27.400 And then I'm handing it off to people on either side of me.

00:27:31.140 And this woman steps in in front of me. 1.00

00:27:32.880 And she's got cameras all over herself. 1.00

00:27:34.520 So I know she's on assignment.

00:27:36.540 But she trips and falls backwards. 0.94

00:27:38.500 And I catch her before she hits the ground. 0.91

00:27:40.420 I throw her up. 0.99

00:27:41.120 And I said, keep going.

00:27:42.160 And it turned out to be Gail Harvey.

00:27:44.620 So 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.

00:27:53.360 But the crowd, they estimated at 10,000 people.

00:27:57.640 It was all the way back as far as you can, in every direction.

00:28:01.720 They were on the walkways.

00:28:02.960 They were all around.

00:28:03.740 And with that many people on the ground, when Terry starts talking, all you can hear isn't way in the background is the traffic.

00:28:14.000 There is not a sound from the crowd.

00:28:16.220 And it was like that almost every time he spoke, because he spoke for the heart.

00:28:22.320 There was no speechwriters for Terry.

00:28:26.180 He spoke what he believed in.

00:28:29.960 And when he spoke, he moved people with his message.

00:28:33.560 And that was the blast off.

00:28:39.240 And 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.

00:28:53.720 It lit the fuse that made the rest of the country sit up and pay real attention.

00:29:01.380 It did.

00:29:02.100 The message got out.

00:29:04.100 London, Ontario.

00:29:05.240 St. Thomas is my hometown.

00:29:06.660 But London, Ontario was the next biggest crowd we ran into.

00:29:10.740 And after that, everywhere for the rest of the run, everywhere we went, even out in the country, there was people lining the road.

00:29:20.140 We put, you know, you get to a town, Brantford, you know, Woodstock, Kitchener, all that route, and then up to Barrie and Gravenhurst.

00:29:29.800 If there was a town of 5,000 people, 10,000 people showed up.

00:29:35.080 And the response in every community was incredible.

00:29:39.620 And the support that we got, too, by the way.

00:29:41.580 We very rarely paid for a dinner, and very rarely did we have to pay for a motel room, too.

00:29:47.340 And you mentioned leaving the Four Seasons.

00:29:50.140 There 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?

00:30:00.180 Mr. 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.

00:30:09.920 And 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.

00:30:19.120 In Montreal, as an example, the night before, we stayed in a convent and little tiny rooms like cells with a cot and a desk.

00:30:28.940 And the next day, we all have our own suites at the Four Seasons in Montreal.

00:30:33.300 We got our T-shirts and shorts back on hangers starched.

00:30:39.300 And then he pledged $2 for every mile that Terry ran, and he challenged 1,000 companies in Canada to join him.

00:30:55.020 And he has been a staunch supporter of the Terry Fox.

00:31:00.880 He was the originator of the Terry Fox Foundation, working with mom and dad.

00:31:06.220 And he's been the chairman of the board.

00:31:08.820 He's now retired for all of these years.

00:31:11.000 And from the beginning, Mr. Sharp was number one supporter of Terry Fox.

00:31:21.760 It's just an amazing story, the legacy that's gone on.

00:31:26.580 But I don't want to leave his time in Toronto yet.

00:31:29.500 I don't want to make it all about Toronto.

00:31:30.980 But as you said, 10,000 people.

00:31:33.180 But you mentioned Tony Gabriel.

00:31:36.140 And I'm sorry, I forget the other gentleman's name in Ottawa.

00:31:38.920 Jerry Organ.

00:31:39.940 Jerry Organ, yes.

00:31:40.720 And by the way, Terry, Jerry, Tony Gabriel is still involved in the Burlington Annual Room.

00:31:48.100 He's one of their organizers.

00:31:50.460 So they both had an impact on Terry.

00:31:53.260 What was it like from meeting, you know, legend Daryl Sittler when he arrives?

00:32:00.760 I tried to pull a trick on him.

00:32:02.380 He didn't fall for it.

00:32:03.240 I went to Terry, you know, 1130 and said,

00:32:06.980 Jesus, I just got a call from Daryl.

00:32:09.220 He can't make it.

00:32:10.720 And meanwhile, he was in the room next to us changing.

00:32:15.020 And anyway, he walks into the room.

00:32:18.240 Now he's changed into his shirt and shoes.

00:32:20.860 And he goes, opens the door and just to Terry and goes, okay, who wants to go for a run?

00:32:25.780 And 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.

00:32:41.680 And the NHL Players Association offered to finish his run.

00:32:45.720 And Terry said, no, nobody's going to finish my run.

00:32:48.740 And then Bobby Orr, Terry was a big Boston fan.

00:32:53.620 And then meeting Orr was a big thrill.

00:32:56.540 We actually came back and Terry spoke to a bunch of business leaders at the Four Seasons.

00:33:01.060 And then we had dinner with Orr, just the five of us.

00:33:06.020 And 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.

00:33:17.480 So, 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.

00:33:31.280 When he, we thought he had broken his ankle up in Sault Ste. Marie, it turned out it wasn't.

00:33:36.680 By the time he's walking out of the hospital, some media had gathered out front and a bunch of reporters standing there.

00:33:44.000 And one of them yells to Terry, Terry, which one of your ankles is bothering you?

00:33:48.400 And without missing a beat, he looks at the guy and he says, the one I don't have.

00:33:55.680 And there's a couple of other times like that, too.

00:33:59.200 So, I remember him coming to Hamilton and to Dundas.

00:34:02.180 And then you've described all these towns that he went to in London and Brantford.

00:34:06.120 That is not a direct route across Canada.

00:34:09.360 I 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.

00:34:19.500 But he zigzagged all over. 0.65

00:34:22.480 When he was planning out his run, he met with a gentleman by the name of Ron Calhoun, who's no longer with us.

00:34:31.520 But Ron was the volunteer chairman for National.

00:34:36.100 And it was actually Ron who coined the phrase Marathon of Hope.

00:34:40.560 And Terry sat down with him with a map.

00:34:44.200 And I don't know whether it was Ron's idea or Terry's idea, but was to run to London.

00:34:50.080 So, when I met Terry out in New Brunswick, we're sitting deciding the route.

00:34:54.500 And he points to Windsor in Niagara Falls.

00:34:57.480 And Terry says to me, well, I want to run there and I want to run there, too.

00:35:00.320 And I had to explain to him that when you're holding a map of BC and you're holding a map of Ontario, the scale is not the same.

00:35:08.820 So, I had to explain, well, okay, there's three days down.

00:35:12.220 And, of course, he would not backtrack.

00:35:14.920 At one point, I said, okay, you run to London.

00:35:17.320 Why don't we drive back to Toronto and head north from there?

00:35:19.820 And he said, no, I don't want anybody to ever say that I did not run every single step of the way.

00:35:25.480 So, I had to explain to them that you're going to add 10 days to your run.

00:35:28.480 When do you want to get home?

00:35:30.100 And that's when it clued on to him was the scale wasn't the same.

00:35:34.720 And I think it's – I don't know what people – I was going to say everybody knows.

00:35:40.680 No, people don't know.

00:35:41.740 At the end of every day, we would hide a bag at the side of the road covered with gravel.

00:35:46.880 If that wasn't possible, he'd go over and touch a telephone post, a fire hydrant or something.

00:35:51.580 The next morning, Doug, his driver, had to pull the van up so when he opened the door, he could step out onto the bag.

00:35:59.700 Or if he couldn't do that, he'd go over and touch the pole that he touched the night before.

00:36:04.260 Again, there were no shortcuts for Terry.

00:36:07.740 He ran every single step of the way, all the way.

00:36:11.260 He was – he had very high ideals and morals.

00:36:15.040 Thunder Bay, what was it like in Thunder Bay when the decision was made, he couldn't go on?

00:36:24.620 Did he make the decision or did he have to be convinced?

00:36:28.620 No.

00:36:30.600 First off, I talked about not going to medicals and he said, I'll know my body when it has to go.

00:36:35.660 So that last day, by mile 18, he said to Doug, I have to go to the hospital.

00:36:45.680 So he knew what was happening.

00:36:51.340 When – 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.

00:37:00.040 And 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.

00:37:11.500 So I went into – actually, my first three words were words that I can't repeat and I'm not very proud of.

00:37:19.860 I swore three times.

00:37:22.280 Like I was –

00:37:23.240 Understandable.

00:37:24.880 No.

00:37:25.680 And then I went into automatic mode.

00:37:27.480 And there's another gentleman, district director, Lou Fine, and I have to mention his name and tell that story.

00:37:33.500 We go into automatic mode.

00:37:35.080 We have to – okay, now we got to get you home because the doctor said he has to be on a plane.

00:37:39.800 He's got to go home today and he has to go home laying down so he can't take a commercial flight.

00:37:46.340 So I immediately try and organize – well, I organize flights for Doug and Daryl, his brother and his friend, to get home.

00:37:53.500 They leave immediately.

00:37:54.640 And then I have to organize that press conference.

00:37:58.540 And I had a friend who worked for the TV station that I had known from another world.

00:38:03.960 And he gave me all the – he said, here's all the contacts, everybody, right here.

00:38:09.120 And he says, as a matter of fact, I'll make the calls for you.

00:38:12.020 And they held that press conference.

00:38:14.520 Meanwhile, we're trying to find a flight home for him.

00:38:16.720 So we're trying the Toronto Star.

00:38:18.280 We're trying, you know, private companies.

00:38:20.900 You know, we can get them as far as Winnipeg.

00:38:23.160 And then finally we talked to OHIP.

00:38:25.980 And 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.

00:38:35.540 And 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.

00:38:44.180 And Lou goes, I've got all the media outside the door of Canada.

00:38:48.440 Do you want me to go out there right now and tell them the government of Ontario would not fly Terry Fox home?

00:38:53.540 One moment, please.

00:38:54.640 30 seconds later, they come back on and go, there'll be a plane there in an hour and a half.

00:39:03.860 So 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.

00:39:20.940 They give you the plane.

00:39:22.300 What happens there?

00:39:23.180 The 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.

00:39:44.240 And as we're driving to the airport, needless to say, mom and dad are very upset.

00:39:48.340 And dad starts going, this is so unfair.

00:39:51.720 This is so unfair.

00:39:53.660 And Terry says, what do you mean, dad?

00:39:55.920 And he said, the cancer, the cancer coming back.

00:39:59.440 And he said, no, it isn't that.

00:40:01.140 He said, I'm no different than anybody else.

00:40:03.720 He said, this is what cancer is all about.

00:40:07.140 And then there was a long pause.

00:40:08.800 And then he says, maybe now people will understand more why I did it.

00:40:14.760 And 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.

00:40:28.800 And 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.

00:40:42.240 Which is horrible.

00:40:43.060 Which is horrible.

00:40:43.780 And he, which is, that's what motivated him in the run in the first place, watching little kids dealing with cancer.

00:40:52.400 So he realized that people were now going to understand more about why he did it.

00:41:00.420 We 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.

00:41:11.140 And then the door closed and the plane taxis.

00:41:20.940 And I remember standing there thinking, this isn't the way the movie is supposed to end.

00:41:26.680 And, and somebody calls me, taps me and says, you want it in the, in the inside.

00:41:33.300 And I pick up the phone and I'm doing an interview as it happens.

00:41:37.200 And I cried through most of it.

00:41:38.760 And then the next day I have to unload the vans.

00:41:42.840 And 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.

00:41:56.160 And they, they asked me to help them tell them who Terry was.

00:42:01.460 Um, so I sat there and they go, look, who did he like as a musician?

00:42:05.820 I'd say, well, John Denver, uh, you know, like country music and they'd get, get John Denver on the telephone.

00:42:12.580 So I sat there and watched that telethon come together.

00:42:17.000 And at the end of the day, um, the producer turned to me and said, where are you going to be Sunday?

00:42:22.100 And I said, I guess home watching it.

00:42:23.580 And he said, do you want to go to be with Terry?

00:42:27.060 And they flew me out and, um, Terry and I watched the telethon together in his hospital room.

00:42:32.520 And, um, they rolled in the, uh, the, the, the drugs and, uh, plugged them up or hooked them up.

00:42:40.640 And 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.

00:42:49.340 And by the time he paid passed away, he reached the 24 million.

00:42:53.660 That was the population of Canada at that time.

00:42:56.180 So 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.

00:43:08.360 And that's all you can do.

00:43:11.800 The, the annual Terry Fox run, which is coming up.

00:43:16.280 Um, I remember it starting when I was in high school.

00:43:21.420 I don't know when it started.

00:43:23.180 You can fill me in on that.

00:43:24.380 But by the time I was in high school, it seemed that every school had a Terry Fox run.

00:43:29.880 Um, my kids were in Terry Fox runs in Ottawa.

00:43:33.420 Um, they, they, they're across Canada and I believe in various parts of the world.

00:43:38.720 So how did that all start?

00:43:39.960 Izzy Sharp, once again, four seasons, he sends a letter to Terry three or four days after Terry finishes run.

00:43:46.940 And he said, I'm going to organize an annual run until we find a cure.

00:43:49.900 Um, so the first run was in 81 and the first run in Ottawa, by the way, there was 10,000 people.

00:43:58.240 I was there for it.

00:43:59.700 Um, 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.

00:44:16.980 Um, and then they can use them in so many different ways, science and geography and, um, the, the, the run spread around the road.

00:44:27.000 My, my son, who's now 51 teaches in China.

00:44:30.120 And 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.

00:44:37.100 So he said, dad, you have to go with him.

00:44:39.020 So I get on the bullet train with 116 or 116 year olds, just like anywhere in Canada. 0.65

00:44:45.240 They're running around the hotel to five o'clock in the morning and have to get up at seven for a run.

00:44:49.180 And we go to the high end golf course in Guangzhou and I've nothing, no, once again, no idea what to expect.

00:44:57.840 And 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.

00:45:07.220 And 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.

00:45:26.960 And I thought to myself, Terry would never believe what his legacy became, that it spread around the world.

00:45:35.740 And at one point there was 64 year, 64 runs around the world.

00:45:39.420 I don't know how many there are.

00:45:40.700 A lot of them are initiated by the Canadian armed forces, expats.

00:45:45.820 Um, 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.

00:45:55.360 Um, and then the school runs every year, the school runs, you know, kids learn about Terry.

00:46:01.100 And 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.

00:46:14.300 Dreams do come true.

00:46:15.700 You can do anything you want.

00:46:17.220 If you work hard, you know, you can have dreams, but if you're not going to put the effort in to get them, you know, it's like,

00:46:25.300 well, you're not going to be there.

00:46:27.900 Well, from $24 million to $850 million, more than $850 million has been raised by the Terry Fox run and the foundation over the years.

00:46:40.440 And that's just going to keep climbing.

00:46:42.280 And for people that think, well, cancer is still with us.

00:46:47.200 Um, you mentioned that the cancer Terry had, there's now a strong survival rate.

00:46:52.180 There's many types of cancer.

00:46:53.540 Cancer is not just one disease.

00:46:55.480 And there's so many of them that they've made massive advances in, um, prostate cancer, breast cancer is an example.

00:47:02.760 They're the money that the, the, each year they do different things.

00:47:08.080 They got the foundation.

00:47:10.380 The money is raised by the foundation, but then it goes to the Terry Fox research Institute, which is the medical arm.

00:47:17.440 And they do all the money off to researchers and they are connected with researchers all around the world.

00:47:23.520 Um, one of the things they're working on right now is a very rare type of childhood brain cancer.

00:47:29.060 Um, which right now there is no cure, but that's, they put a focus on that one.

00:47:34.620 And 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.

00:47:45.920 Um, and that's Princess Margaret is part of that. 0.89

00:47:48.920 And all of the major cancer research places across Canada are part of that.

00:47:53.620 And it's all organized by the Terry Fox Research Foundation.

00:47:59.060 Bill Vigar's book is called Terry and me, the inside story of Terry Fox's marathon of hope.

00:48:04.180 And it comes out August 29th, highly recommend it.

00:48:07.580 And Bill, thanks for a great chat today and insights into a man that you feel like, you know, but of course I never did.

00:48:14.800 And yet you did.

00:48:15.900 So thanks for sharing.

00:48:16.820 Thank you very much.

00:48:17.620 And you would like him.

00:48:18.720 If you ever had a chance to meet him, you'd like him.

00:48:21.360 He's cool guy.

00:48:22.340 I'm sure I would.

00:48:23.540 Thank you very much.

00:48:24.920 Full comment is a post media podcast.

00:48:27.140 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:48:29.060 This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:48:33.180 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:48:35.260 You can subscribe to full comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Amazon Music.

00:48:39.940 Listen on your Apple or Alexa enabled devices and help us out by giving us a rating, leaving a review and telling your friends about us.

00:48:47.300 Thanks for listening.

00:48:48.180 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:48:57.140 We'll be right back.

Full Comment - August 28, 2023

The amazing story of Terry Fox you haven’t heard

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