More money, more participants for Terry Fox Run

The Terry Fox Run in Olds raised close to double the amount of money for cancer research from last year and saw triple the number of participants, according to organizers.

Justin Andrew of the Olds Fire Department, who co-organized the event with fellow firefighter Noel D'Arcy, reported that 60 people participated in the Sept. 18 run, raising approximately $5,000.

Proceeds from the 2015 event totalled about $2,300 from 20 runners.

As usual, the route started at the Centennial Park gazebo, on a brisk morning.

Rhonda Riseborough, director of the Terry Fox Foundation in Alberta, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, was one of the people there. She spent the weekend visiting several runs in Sundre, Didsbury, Water Valley and Cochrane to greet and thank volunteers. She works with organizers in the summers but wanted to meet them in person.

"Our participants are very loyal. We tend to have the same participants year after year. They tend to come out regardless of the weather," Riseborough said.

The Terry Fox Run is in its 36th year. Riseborough credits schools and educators for keeping the enduring tradition going, teaching kids about Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope.

"It's a family tradition in a lot of cases. People are here with their grandparents, their kids, their grandchildren. It's become a legacy event. Cancer touches all of us but Terry's model of courage and determination is just timeless," she said.

Riseborough started within the foundation as a volunteer in 1997 and has now been provincial director for 13 years. She recalled being middle school-aged during Fox's run.

She described seeing Fox as a "big brother to us" and expected him to reach the Pacific Ocean. As Fox trekked from St. John's to Thunder Bay, Riseborough traced his journey on a map, learning about Canada along the way.

"He brought a sense of what it meant to be Canadian to a young generation that had never been exposed to that before, other than through sporting events," she said.

Each year, about $3 million is raised in Alberta. Today, Riseborough said cancer research is being done more collaboratively, bringing researchers together from across the country. She names two studies being funded: one into glioblastoma – the cancer that The Tragically Hip singer Gordon Downie has – and childhood cancers.

Not every cancer story ends happily but if there's a case study that gives her hope, it's Fox's own. In his day, Fox was given a 20 per cent chance of survival from osteosarcoma, which usually affects youth and young adults. Today, those diagnosed have an 80 per cent chance.

"We take a lot of pride in that statistic in particular. We have a lot of osteosarcoma survivors in the province. There's a young girl who had it and was about 12 in Calgary. She just graduated from nursing school; she's going to be a palliative nurse. It's so gratifying for us to see those success stories."

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