Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope named best moment in B.C. sports history

Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope, which began in 1980, was voted as the top moment in British Columbia sporting history on June 10.

Tim Huebsch June 17, 2016

The B.C. Sports Hall of Fame named Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope as the top moment in British Columbia sports history on June 10 at the organization’s annual banquet. The winner was decided in a bracket-style tournament as 50 notable sporting events went head-to-head before the champion was decided.

The Marathon of Hope beat out Sidney Crosby’s “Golden Goal” that helped Team Canada win gold in the men’s hockey final at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The voting period was known as the “50 Biggest Moments in B.C. Sports History.”

Fox and his iconic run received 30,000 public votes over the course of the month.

Fox’s Marathon of Hope was an attempted run across Canada that began in 1980, three years after the standout basketball player’s leg was amputated. Running with a prosthetic leg, Fox made it as far as Thunder Bay, Ont. after starting in Newfoundland. He was forced to stop because his cancer spread and he died in 1981 at the age of 22.

His hope was to raise one dollar from each of the 24 million Canadians at the time. Fox, who was born in Winnipeg but grew up in Port Coquitlam, B.C. before attending Simon Fraser University, ran a marathon a day and completed more than 5,373 kilometres in a 143-day span.

Since his run, the Terry Fox Foundation has raised more than $650 million for cancer research and his legacy lives on through the annual Terry Fox Run. He’s considered one of the greatest Canadians of all time.

This year’s Terry Fox Run will take place on Sep. 18, 2016.

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