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Terry Fox’s 1980 quest to run across Canada has been covered in numerous books and two feature films. But a new documentary this fall, Run Terry Run, showcases footage audiences have never seen.
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Director Sean Menard unearthed 96 film reels from the Fox family, transporting audiences back to the Marathon of Hope through intimate moments inside the journey and along the highways where Fox ran.
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Fox’s younger brother Darrell Fox said the new material gave him a chance to hear his brother’s voice again.
“Terry’s just having a conversation,” he said. “I certainly have a lot of footage of Terry running, but to hear his voice is really, as a family member, incredibly powerful.”
Fox was just 20 when he began his run with the goal of raising $1 from each of Canada’s 24 million people. He had lost his right leg to osteosarcoma.
He started in St. John’s, N.L., on April 12, 1980 dipping his prosthetic right leg into the Atlantic Ocean and aiming to do the same in the Pacific. Darrell joined him part way through the journey.
“You see an average guy,” he said. “Youthful, yes, but wise beyond his years because of what he went through — going through chemo and watching the suffering of others.”
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For Menard, finding the footage was a triumph that was quickly followed by a sense of “beautiful responsibility.”
“It went very quickly to feeling the weight,” he said, “as a Canadian filmmaker to share that not only in Canada but around the world as well for people who maybe don’t know the Terry Fox story.”
He recalled finding the first reel and realizing he had not seen anything like it before.
“This is very much feeling what it would have been like if I was standing on the side of the road in 1980,” Menard said.
Menard said the footage captures Fox in unguarded moments, including scenes in which he comes across not as a legend but as a regular 21-year-old carrying an extraordinary goal.
On Sept. 1, 1980, Fox was forced to stop running just east of Thunder Bay, Ont., because his cancer had returned and spread. He had covered 5,373 kilometres in 143 days.
Darrell said his brother was just an average guy who “ran away from the pedestal.”
The message of his story is the same as it has been for more than 40 years.
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