A giant banner photo of a tired but determined-looking Terry Fox overlooked participants as the 37th annual Terry Fox Run at Douglas Park in Langley City got underway Sunday morning.
The picture was taken while the Marathon of Hope hero was running across Canada in 1980 to raise money for cancer research.
There were 228 participants in the Langley City run this year, about the same as last year, but they managed to raise a total of $13,801, or about $2,000 more than last year’s event, organizer Marg McGuire-Grout said.
“I’m ecstatic,” McGuire-Grout said.
There were 50 volunteers who began setting up for the 10 a.m. start at 7 a.m.
The Langley City run was one of more than 9,000 held across the country each year to raise money for cancer research and to honour Fox’s Marathon of Hope.
“We pretty much work all year round to get this thing together,” McGuire-Grout told The Times.
“It’s a lot of work. A couple of weeks leading up to it, I think I’m going to pull my hair out and I think I don’t know if I can do this any more — and then we come here today and all the people come out and everybody pulls together and puts on just a great, a great event. And so then, it’s kind of like, we can do this again.”
McGuire-Grout said she got involved in the annual fundraiser because both of her parents as well as several other family members have battled cancer.
Her mother won her battle, living to 91 and dying cancer-free, but her father died of cancer, McGuire-Grout said.
“Because cancer has touched my family so much, I thought it was something I could do.”
There were two Terry Fox Runs in Langley Township, one in Walnut Grove, the other in Aldergrove.
How it began
After losing a leg to cancer, Terry Fox began the Marathon of Hope to raise money for cancer research, saying if each Canadian could contribute just a dollar, millions could be raised to fight cancer.
After 143 days and 5,373 kilometres Fox was forced to end his run near Thunder Bay, Ontario after his cancer spread to his lungs.
Terry Fox Runs have taken place every year on the second Sunday following Labour Day since September of 1981.
They are volunteer-led, all-inclusive, non-competitive events with no corporate sponsorship, incentives or fundraising minimums according to the expressed wishes of Terry Fox.
Millions of people in over 60 countries now take part in what has become the world’s largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised in his name.
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