My Review: 5 of 5 Stars
Coupland's book is both a pictorial representation of some of the 100,000+ archived items from The Marathon of Hope and also snippets & stories about Terry Fox from a young adult, through his diagnosis, Marathon of Hope, and the affect he had on many Canadians.
A brief history to what is presented in this book - Terry Fox is known as a Canadian hero (officially voted as Canada's Greatest Hero in 1999). In 1977, at the age of 18, Terry had his leg amputated above the knee as a result of a cancer diagnosis. While in the hospital, he hatched the idea of completing a run across Canada, from the East to West Coast - the plan was to run a marathon every day for 200 days, raising awareness and funds for cancer research along the way. His goal was to raise $1 for every Canadian ($24 million) in his Marathon of Hope. In 1980 he began his run. He was forced to stop 143 days & 3,339 miles later in Thunder Bay, Ontario as the cancer had spread to his lungs. Less than a year later he succumbed to the disease - by then his story & mission had affected the nation. According to the Terry Fox Foundation, as of May 2014 over $640 million has been raised for cancer research in Terry's name.
As a 10-year old, I diligently followed every news story I could about Terry & The Marathon of Hope. I cut out every story I could find in the newspaper & pasted them in a scrapbook. As I read through Coupland's book, I kept thinking to myself that it was like an excellently executed adult version of a scrapbook. The pictures of artifacts, journal entries, stories, letters, and tidbits of information were put together beautifully - it all transported me back to my 10 year-old self.
"Even though I die of cancer my spirit didn't die and that should influence a lot of people." Terry Fox, 12/22/1980.
This is my first book read for the 8th Annual Canadian Book Challenge.
An inspiring story. I had not heard of this.
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