The film allows us to spend time with Fox and our less glitzy country, as it was then, with no cellphones, cash donations, sandwiches and fruit juice fuelling Fox’s run, and sneakers as flimsy as crackers.Elevation Pictures/Supplied
There’s a scene in director Sean Menard’s new documentary Run Terry Run in which Terry Fox describes “the most inspirational day of his life.” It’s when he spends an afternoon in Northern Ontario with a 10-year-old boy, his hair gone from chemo, his prosthetic leg removed, and they’re splashing around Jackfish Lake in Thunder Bay. “Sometimes I wonder if what I’m doing has meaning, today I found out that it does,” Fox says in the film, choking back tears. “Chasing death definitely changes the way you see life … I believe in miracles, because I have to.”
Run Terry Run, premiering this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, is composed entirely of archival footage of Fox’s 1980 Marathon of Hope, where the 21-year-old attempted to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. Fox’s efforts would go on to raise more than $1-billion and fund more than 1,300 research projects and his legacy still looms large over this country.
Mat Haley is one of many Canadians long inspired by Fox’s story.
It took on an even more personal note for him, when his four-year-old daughter Emma was diagnosed with cancer in January, 2025.
Now, Haley is getting ready for his first 42.2 kilometre race, in the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon on Oct. 18. And he’s raising money for the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario.
His family has long associated cancer with Fox. And Emma’s diagnosis raised concern for her older sister Clara.
“You have to sort of tell her, ‘Your sister has cancer and Terry Fox had cancer and Terry Fox died, but that was a long time ago, science has come a long way and thanks to Terry Fox, the treatment is better,’” Haley said the other day on a run in Toronto, a tattoo of his daughters’ names on his right bicep, a Canadian flag on the left.
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Emma and Clara started doing Terry Fox runs in kindergarten and do them every year, Haley said, noting they associate Fox with cancer, but also think of him as an example of endurance, willpower and strength.
There’s a scene in Run Terry Run in which Fox arrives at Toronto’s City Hall and speaks to his largest audience. The crowd, including countless children, is galvanized, hanging on Terry’s every word, and the young sunburnt runner speaks with humility and guts. It’s the same setting where the Toronto Waterfront Marathon ends. And Emma, who spent the past year in remission, plans to be there cheering with her family.
Haley’s never run further than 25 kilometres and his training took a hit in July when he hurt his knee. It’s natural to say a runner is inspired by Fox – how he swivelled his hip and leaned in with his shoulders to swing his prosthetic leg forward, landing on the heel of his one good foot, with blood dripping down from his stump to his socks.
Haley works as a contractor in Oshawa. He thinks about Fox after work when he heads out after dinner to clear his head on a run.
“Thinking how he must’ve felt running with one leg coming off cancer treatment and doing the run while cancer was slowly creeping back into him is impossible to grasp,” said the 41-year-old, who sees Fox’s tenacity reflected in his daughter. She took a serene approach to her treatment. Haley said he can count on one hand the number of times his four-year-old complained about cancer.
“She went with it,” he said. “We go to the hospital, she gets treatment that will make her sick, we don’t know if we’re staying for a night or a week, we don’t know what’s going to happen – horrible things – but she made it easy, lots of childhood cancer kids apparently do.”
Sunday is the annual Terry Fox Run across Canada and millions of Canadians will take part. Run Terry Run ends as it has to with Fox failing to run home to Vancouver, but the Marathon of Hope does not end. The film allows us to spend time with Fox and our less glitzy country, as it was then, with no cellphones, cash donations, John Denver on the radio, sandwiches and fruit juice fuelling Fox’s run, and sneakers as flimsy as crackers.
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At Emma’s school, they raise a cancer awareness flag and both of Haley’s girls run their laps for Terry, a fitting tribute to the icon that Run Terry Run brings back to life.
“I get hurt when I see things happening that shouldn’t be happening and I try to change them,” Fox says in a clip in the film. “I’m no different than anyone else is. I’m not a great athlete or overly intelligent. I’m just trying to do the best that I can.”
Run Terry Run premieres at TIFF Sept. 19, one day ahead of the 46th annual Terry Fox Run (tiff.net). It will open in theatres Oct. 9.