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October 4, 2005
Go west, young man, go west.
To many people, Terry never stopped running. Day or night he's still near us, passing by the outskirts of the cities we live in with his strange hop-click-thunk step forever fine and forever keeping the best parts of ourselves alive, too.
I received an unexpected package in the post from my parents a while ago--a copy of Douglas Coupland's new book, Terry. Coupland has long been my favourite author to read on aeroplanes and in waiting rooms--lightweight but still achingly beautiful. Lit very close to confection, books that don't take longer than a day to read, but still just damned good. And even if his two beautiful, loving Souvenir of Canada Collections may have prepared me for the onslaught of nationalist pride this book would hit me with, the punch in the spiritual gut was another thing entirely.
Every nation has its great myths--the stories it tells itself to shape identity and to form its culture. Most of Canada's had been dull things about the fur trade and angry Quebeçois; as the nation rolled into the 1980s, it desperately needed its own story to tell. Just a few years earlier, Trudeau had danced his pirouette behind the back of the queen, and Gretzky was just a kid turning heads at the Oilers. But Canada had never been bound by anything or anybody quite like Terry Fox.
It was a rough Newfoundland day that greeted the start of the Marathon of Hope in 1980. St John's knows how to make its weather momentous when it wants to be noticed. Not too many people were paying much attention to the impossibly young one-legged cancer victim filling a bottle with the brine of the Atlantic. Even fewer cared, or believed in his aim to pour that very same water into the Pacific, a short run away on the opposite side of the vastest of nations. With a send off from the mayor, the Marathon began, with a click and a thunk and a thud, off down the Trans Canada Highway. From one side of the continent to the other, Terry would run. Realists and medical advisors told him it was not only stupid, but impossible, even for a fit athlete. Never say the words "stupid" and "impossible" to a man in the middle of an inspirational sports story, all it does is make the Rocky theme play even louder.
He ran only 11 miles that first day, and not much more the day after. Eventually, though, he was running the equivalent of a marathon, every day. And as he ran, a funny thing happened. His official entourage was only his best friend in a camper van carrying a few rotating pairs of fresh socks and a place to collapse at the end of the day, but soon enough people began to run with him. Alongside him. They just wanted to be near him. The country's cameras began to roll alongside in vans, and the dreams of schoolchildren raced along too, beside him and surrounding him at night. Families in quaint and arcane hamlets in foggiest Atlantic Canada sheltered him. And in the cities, the masses flocked to cheer him in their tens of thousands.
It's the little details that Coupland's book does so well. Terry had constant sunburn on his face, but only on the left cheek -- the sun stayed on that side as he ran ever westward. He only ever wore a white t-shirt with red "marathon of hope" lettering, and grey shorts; he refused any clothing that had logos or branding attached, as it might imply endorsement. One wonders if a very young Naomi Klein took notice of this in her Toronto primary school.
The plastic buckets used for collecting donations became so full that they began to collect in empty fried chicken buckets.
And into the grease, a country poured its pride, its soul, and countless millions of dollars that still support cancer research to this day. America founds its ideas and notions of space and nationhood as the frontiers opened up and opportunity rushed westwards. I don't think it's going too far to say that Canada never really thought of itself as a space, one that could be traversed and thus one that was bound, until that prosthetic leg and the superhero on top of it drew the threads for all of us.
On September 1, 1980, 5,373 kilometres into the run, just north of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Terry collapsed. In his right lung, x-rays showed a tumor the size of a golf ball; in his left, one the size of a lemon. Cancer has no time for sentiment; the marathon would never be finished. He had made it through Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick, Quebec and most of Ontario -- nearly two thirds of the country. He died in hospital some nine months later.
If there was a downside to this saccharine tale of achievement and nationhood, it was the resultant Rod Stewart charity single, Never Give Up On A Dream. Canadians were able to forgive this when voting him second in a recent poll for The Greatest Canadian. A few years before, he had been little more than a stubborn teenager with so many signs pointing to mundanity. When he set out on the run, his dream was to raise a dollar for every Canadian. In 2005, the debossed image of a young man with a prosthetic leg, at full stride, can be found on the face of the dollar coin. Shucks.
Technorati Tags: canada, coupland
Posted by patrick at October 4, 2005 10:11 PM
Comments
for chrissakes, paddy, write something....
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Posted by: marty at October 21, 2005 4:36 PM
yeah, come on paddy. some of us have study we're meant to be avoiding
Posted by: tim at October 21, 2005 6:07 PM
