'Run Terry Run' finds the man inside the Canadian icon

The new film Run Terry Run shows the man inside the Canadian icon as it takes the viewer back to 1980 and Terry Fox's Marathon Of Hope. Photo by olivia nasner /VIFF

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It is fair to think that every part of Terry Fox’s short life has been discussed and chronicled.

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Since his 1980, 143-day-long Marathon of Hope has been taught in schools, commemorated in statues and, each year, runs in his name are held around the world. But after encountering Fox’s image while travelling and seeing one of his statues from a stoplight in Ottawa, Toronto filmmaker Sean Menard realized that he did not really know Terry Fox, the man.

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“I didn’t know how old he was. I didn’t know the details of his journey. I actually thought he ran across the whole country,” said Menard about Coquitlam’s Fox, who passed away from cancer on June 28, 1981 at age 22.

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Unable to find a definitive film that satisfied his curiosity, Menard set out to make one — and discovered an archive that would guide him in the making of the new feature documentary, Run Terry Run.

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The film, screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival (Oct. 4, 1:45 p.m. at the Vancouver Playhouse and Oct. 5, 5:30 p.m. at International Village 9) before hitting theatres Oct. 9, uses rediscovered footage and contemporary audio interviews. The result is a very immersive return to 1980 where the realities of the Marathon Of Hope, from rough running conditions, cramped van life, lack of early support and, of course, the punishing physical effort of running an actual marathon a day on a wooden walking prosthesis, are laid bare.

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Menard’s research led him to the Fox family, who had five digitized reels labelled five through nine. The numbering suggested four missing reels. Menard went looking for them.

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What he found was a lot bigger. More than 90 reels were discovered housed in a storage facility just “five streetlights” from Menard’s Toronto home. One of the first reels Menard watched was silent footage of Fox running uphill for three uninterrupted minutes.

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“I get goosebumps even thinking about that,” said Menard. “Seeing the effort, it takes on every stride, and seeing the cars whip by him because, at that time, they didn’t know who he was, and in that moment, I knew that this was something special.”

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Once he decided this was a story he wanted to tell, Menard had to convince those close to Fox to talk with him.

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“What’s interesting is, when I sat them down, the very first question all of them asked was, ‘Why is this different than any other Terry Fox movie?’ Because they had been involved in countless productions,” said Menard. “I had my laptop and I showed them just raw footage. It was maybe five minutes of just Terry running in Toronto.”

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Their doubts soon fell away.

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“Oh wow, I’ve never seen this before,” they told Menard.

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His answer was blunt: “No one has. … I think, right then, they realized that this is probably going to be unique.”

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Toronto filmmaker Sean Menard decided to make the new documentary Run Terry Run after realizing that he did not really know anything about Terry Fox. The film is screening at VIFF Oct. 4 and 5 and will have a country-wide theatrical release on Oct. 9. Photo by George Pimentel /Courtesy of VIFF

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Fox began the Marathon Of Hope in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980. He ran more than 5,000 kilometres before the return of cancer forced him to stop on Sept. 1, 1980, near Thunder Bay, Ont.

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With the Terry Fox Foundation now having raised $1 billion for cancer research, it is hard to imagine that Fox began his run far under the radar. Menard said he assumed the Marathon Of Hope was a well-financed, well-oiled operation, whose hero was celebrated at every stop.