Move over Don Cherry. This is a real Canadian hero.
As an attempt to try to shave off a little of my ignorance on Canadian culture, I decided to delve deep into a subject all Canucks vaguely know about – Terry Fox. We all did the Terry Fox run in elementary school and we know he died of Cancer. But what makes this man the legend he is?
Simply put, Terry Fox was a dude. He was the dude-of-all-dudes And a hero as understated as they come.
Through this book, I enjoyed getting to know his story on a much deeper level than pledge drives and cancer societies. Author Scrivener is clearly a newspaper writer and it shows; there isn’t much poetry here, the book reads like an account of events transpired in a timeline from the discovery of bone cancer in Fox’s leg until his death in 1981. Oh yeah, and somewhere in between all of that the fucking guy ran (on one leg) almost 2/3s of the way across Canada. Not only that but it was the shitty side; St. John’s to Thunder Bay, a winding, hilly maze of shitty drivers and humid smog. I was in tears at multiple times during this book and it wasn’t because of the amazing writing. The story here is inspiring and one that all Canadians should be proud of. The author was close to Fox during the entire ordeal and even shares entries from Fox’s journal. Not only was he a champ for running so far but he did it with cancer, with one leg and he ran a marathon a day, on average. Getting to read his understated journal entries is humourous at times. Fox was so humble and determined and generous that I eventually felt like a useless, selfish, uncharitable tit after reading this book. I can only imagine what a greater author would have made of this story, because the result here is moving. – Mike Berard