ASSINIBOIA - Several community members attended the annual Terry Fox Run, held in Assiniboia. The day was a spectacularly beautiful day to be walking with friends for a great cause. There were 17 people, several bikes and two faithful dogs who met at the Southland Co-op for start, and lingered after their walk for a visit and the ice cream treats donated by the Southland Co-op.
There was $200 donated on the day. Online donations were up 15 per cent from last year, and mail-in donations continue to be sent to the provincial office in Regina. Carissa Robb is the Director of Community Development for both Saskatchewan and Manitoba for the Terry Fox Foundation. In a telephone interview she said that no total for 2022 is available yet because of those welcome checks that keep coming in the mail. “In 21 Terry Fox Runs, the community of Assiniboia has raised $23,005. Well done!”
Even when COVID prevented gathering, the community donated $1,200 in 2020 and $980 in 2021.
When Terry ran in 1980, he insisted that every dollar donated to his Run went to research and patient care. The Terry Fox Foundation named in his honour holds to that same value. In 2021 the national total of donations to the Terry Fox Foundation was $20.7 million. It supports scientists who are at the leading edge of cancer research and who are developing more compassionate and effective treatments. If Terry were alive today, he would probably survive his cancer and he would not lose his leg.
Sometime in the 1990s, a child in Rockglen school reported back to his mother, “They told me a Silver Fox was gonna talk at our school today, but there was just some lady with grey hair.” That gracious silver-haired lady was Betty Fox, Terry’s mother, who started the tradition of traveling at her own expense to visit as many communities as possible to bring the hopeful story of her son to as many Canadians as she could.
Fred Fox, Terry’s brother, visited Saskatchewan for the Foundation on September 11 this year.
Terry ran 26 miles a day for 143 days using a terrible steel artificial leg. His above-knee stump was always painful and usually bloody. He ran through snow, high winds and alongside fast-moving traffic. Some cities welcomed him with huge receptions and media coverage while others ignored his heroic effort. Many times other runners would join him on the road, but for most of his daily marathons of hardship, he ran alone. He kept a journal of each day in which he recorded moments of triumph and moments of anguish.
On one of those days he wrote, “No one is going to call me a quitter.”
Terry was forced to stop, but he never ever quit, and his legacy goes on. Let’s not quit, Assiniboia. Local residents are encouraged to participate in the 2023 Terry Fox Run.
