The Terry Fox Run will be held again in Cochrane at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre Sunday, Sept. 14.
The annual run has been happening in Cochrane since it first began nationally in 1981 and a long time organizer of the event in Cochrane is returning to organize this year’s run.
Judy Stewart will be organizing the event along with a group of dedicated volunteers and said the run has been a big part of her and her family’s lives since it began.
“He has become a symbol of hope and endurance,” she said of Fox. “To always think one step at a time and that whole determination. The fact that an individual matters in the whole scheme of things – he became heroic.”
Stewart said that a man named Roger Mitchell had organized a run for school kids in Cochrane in 1981. The next year, he invited the community to come along.
The following year, a woman named Grace Atkin organized a larger community run with her daughter. Stewart said she began to help Atkin and eventually took over the role of the main organizer with Atkin still helping her.
Stewart said she stopped organizing the event shortly after 2004 when she was mayor of Cochrane. Elizabeth Bennett had been organizing it after that and when Stewart read that Bennett had stepped down, she offered step into the role again this year.
She said Atkin would be helping her at the registration table.
“The first time it sunk in of what he actually did is when we were going through Thundery Bay and stopped at that monument and spent an hour just staring at it and walking around it and trying to imagine,” said Stewart. “Why would he think of doing something like this and how did he take every step and not give up?”
The first Terry Fox Run was held in 1981 at more than 760 sites in Canada and around the world. As of May 2014, the foundation announced it had raised over $650 million in support of cancer research in Fox’s name.
Registration this year begins at 12:30 p.m. and the run and walk begins at 1 p.m. There is no entry fee and no minimum pledge.
There are one, three, five and 10 km stopping points and people can go as far as they want. The route is bikes and dog friendly. For more information visit terryfox.org.
