INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

25 SEPTEMBER 2003
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There was something about Eric Walters' earnestness and compassion that made the Fox family change its mind for the first time in 22 years.

Terry Fox book aims to inspire youth

Eric Walters, author of Terry Fox book, stands next to Fox statue in Ottawa.

 After years of turning down dozens of authors wanting to write a novel about their beloved Terry, the Fox family finally agreed to let Walters pen the first novel about him for young readers, entitled Run. “Eric was extremely sincere and passionate about the story,” says Terry's brother Darrell Fox, the national director of the Terry Fox Foundation.

“He also did extensive research on Terry even before he approached us, knew a lot about the type of person he was (and) had actually spent vacation time travelling the roads that Terry ran on, just to get a feel for what Terry went through.”

The novel centres on a young runaway, Winston MacDonald, who is sent to spend time with his father, a newspaper columnist who travels to Nova Scotia to write a human interest story about a young man trying to run across Canada. Winston spends time with Terry Fox and his best friend, Doug, and their determination makes a big impression on him.

“It's funny how making a real person into a fictionalized character makes them more real,” Walters says about Fox, the 22-year-old Canadian who ran across the country in 1980 to raise money for cancer research. “So it's made Terry more real.”

Walters, who writes historical fiction for young adults, approached the Fox family more than two years ago after being inspired while seeing the statue of the young man in Ottawa. The 46-year-old author lost his mother to liver cancer at age four and wrote the book also partly to honour her memory.

“We're trying to carry on with Terry's legacy,” says Walters, who did not take a salary for writing the book and is donating all the royalties to the Terry Fox Foundation. His publisher, Penguin Group Canada, has decided to match his contribution, dollar for dollar. “We're trying to raise some money to find a cure for cancer.”

“He's without a doubt the biggest hero of my generation,” adds Walters of Fox, who ran thousands of kilometres with a prosthetic leg before being forced to stop because of his illness in Thunder Bay, Ont. “He was an amazing man; it was an inspiration in terms of the idea of persistence, determination, not giving up.”

As the 23rd annual Terry Fox Run approaches, about 4,000 schools across Canada will be participating in the 10-kilometre race, usually held on the second Sunday following Labour Day.

Eric Murphy, a Grade 7 student at Cardinal Leger Catholic School in Toronto, says he's preparing for his ninth Terry Fox run this year. “The run is so important to me because I like carrying on people's dreams,” says Murphy, who has three relatives that are cancer survivors. Murphy says he'd be willing to read Run to learn more about the kind of person Fox was. The book came out in the first week of September. “I would like to know more about Terry Fox because he's Canadian and he's part of our nation's history, so maybe I could learn something new about him.”

The first Terry Fox Run in 1981 attracted 300,000 participants across Canada and raised $3.5 million. To date, over $300 million has been raised for cancer research in Terry's name.

Martha McClew, Ontario director at the Terry Fox Foundation, says since school resumed for the year, the organization has received more than 30 phone calls from schools wanting to buy Walters' new book and incorporate it into their own curriculums to have it coincide with the schools' own Terry Fox runs. “I think it shows schools want something new that they can show and share with the students about Terry, and Eric's reputation precedes him too,” says McClew. “These children are dying to look at Terry in a new way and that's what this book is going to provide.”

She says the foundation was also impressed with Walters' — and his publisher's — commitment to donate all the proceeds to cancer research. Walters says he hopes the book will gain widespread popularity.

“I expect this book to live on for a long time, and hopefully have a surge every year when the Terry Fox Run happens.”

Adrienne Archibald, a Grade 5 student and cross-country runner at Whitney Public School in Toronto, says Fox has been an inspiration to her. “It's just a nice thing to do,” says Archibald, 10, of the annual run. “Because Terry ran across Canada for cancer, that's why I think everybody should do it.”

As for Darrell Fox, he says he has already read Run seven times. “To read quotes from Terry, or dialogue from Terry that he did not actually say, but could have said, has been an extremely moving experience for me,” he says.

“Terry is in this book, even though it's part fiction. Certainly his personality very much comes across in the book.”

By Anna Czerny

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