Terry Fox Fundraising – we love the support!
Thank you to the STS student and staff community for your participation in our class runs during the week of September 20 – 24, 2021. It was an amazing demonstration of caring, encouragement and fun! The STS Terry Fox Run is a part of one of Canada’s biggest displays of solidarity against cancer while setting an example of compassion, fostering school spirit, and encouraging physical activity! Our participation over the past 37 years exemplifies our dedication to supporting Terry Fox.
Elementary students did a wonderful job “Trying Like Terry” and covered incredible distances.
In Middle School, students ran during their Physical Education classes on Thursday and Friday. They were engaged in the challenge to collect fundraising pledges as a house competition. Senior School grades ran a modified route, but had the chance to demonstrate their commitment to supporting Terry’s dream.
For 3,339 miles, from St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada’s easternmost city on the shore of the Atlantic, Terry ran through six provinces and was two-thirds of the way home to BC. He’d run close to a marathon a day, for 143 days. No mean achievement for an able-bodied runner, an extraordinary feat for an amputee. Terry’s left leg was strong and muscular. His right was a mere stump fitted with an artificial limb made of fibreglass and steel. He’d lost his leg to cancer when he was 18.
He was 22 when he started; curly-haired, good-looking, sunburned. He was strong, willful, and stubborn. His run, the Marathon of Hope, as he called it, was an adventure across Canada that defied logic and common sense, was his way of repaying a debt.
Terry believed that he had won his fight against cancer, and he wanted to raise money, $1 million perhaps, to fight the disease. There was a second, possibly more important purpose to his marathon; a man is not less because he has lost a leg, indeed, he may be more. Certainly, he showed there were no limits to what an amputee could do.
He changed people’s attitude towards the disabled, and he showed that while cancer had claimed his leg, his spirit was unbreakable. His Marathon of Hope had started as an improbable dream – two friends, one to drive the van, one to run, a ribbon of highway, and the sturdy belief that they could perform a miracle.
He ran through ice storms and summer heat, against bitter winds of such velocity he couldn’t move, through fishing villages and Canada’s biggest cities. Though he shunned the notion himself, people were calling him a hero. He still saw himself as simple little Terry Fox, from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, average in everything but determination.
STS is part of Terry’s Marathon of Hope. Every year Terry Fox Runs are held in over 9000 communities across Canada with the goal of raising funds for cancer research. The Terry Fox Foundation works directly with the Terry Fox Research Institute striving for the best outcomes for cancer patients.
We are off to a fabulous start to our yearly fundraising for Terry Fox, and we thank so many of you who have already contributed. To date, we are among the top 10 schools in Canada for online fundraising totals. Thank you for your incredible support!
Pledges in support of our fundraising efforts for the STS Terry Fox Run have been arriving at the school, and have been adding to the tally on our STS Terry Fox Fundraising page at http://www.terryfox.ca/StrathconaTweedsmuir
Please remind your children that they can submit their pledge sheets and donations to their homeroom teachers, or to the Front Desks.