Forty-five years after Terry Fox inspired a nation with his determination to find a cure for cancer, Joyce Cook is still walking for his dream.<\/p>\n
Only now she\u2019s doing it 628 kilometres from her hometown of Trail.<\/p>\n
Cook, 93, who now resides in Vancouver, recently received a plaque from the Terry Fox Foundation recognizing 45 years of participation in the annual run inspired by Fox\u2019s Marathon of Hope.<\/p>\n
For Cook, however, the plaque is less about recognition and more a reminder of why she started walking in Trail that Sunday in 1981.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember being totally in awe of what Terry had done and how he did it with one leg,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cook was born in Rossland in 1933 and moved to Fruitvale as a toddler. At 21, she moved to Trail, where she married Ken Cook, worked in banking, raised her family and eventually made her home in Sunningdale.<\/p>\n
She remained in Trail until age 83, when family persuaded her to move to Langley to be closer to her children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n
She later moved to Vancouver in 2023.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to Terry Fox, Cook\u2019s connection to Trail never really ended.<\/p>\n
Although Trail has not had an organized Terry Fox Run for several years, its fundraising site remains active and Cook continues raising money under the Trail site number.<\/p>\n
At least half of her sponsors still live in Trail or were raised in Trail, she said.<\/p>\n
Last year, Terry\u2019s Team \u2014 Cook\u2019s group of supporters \u2014 raised $14,103.<\/p>\n
Cook didn\u2019t think about keeping track of the totals for the first 22 years.<\/p>\n
However, over the 23 years she has kept records, the team has raised $151,480 for cancer research through the Terry Fox Foundation.<\/p>\n
Cook has now given herself another goal: she wants to live long enough to have documented raising more than $200,000 in support of Terry Fox\u2019s dream. <\/p>\n
Her devotion to the cause began with Terry himself.<\/p>\n
Fox was 18 when he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma and lost his right leg above the knee.<\/p>\n
In 1980, at age 21, he set out from St. John\u2019s, N.L., on his Marathon of Hope, intending to run across Canada to raise money and awareness for cancer research.<\/p>\n
His goal was essentially a marathon a day.<\/p>\n
After 143 days and 5,373 kilometres, Fox was forced to stop near Thunder Bay, Ont., on Sept. 1, 1980, when cancer was discovered in his lungs.<\/p>\n
He died the following June at age 22, without completing his cross-country journey.<\/p>\n
Seventy-seven days after Fox died of cancer, the first Terry Fox Run was held on Sept. 13, 1981.<\/p>\n
Cook remembers the early Terry Fox Runs in Trail, when she would walk to church and stop at the registration table at Gyro Park on her way home.<\/p>\n
Volunteers staffed water stations and handed out orange slices as people made their way along the route.<\/p>\n
She also remembers trying to imitate Terry\u2019s distinctive running gait.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried hopping like he did and still can\u2019t imagine how that must have hurt landing on his prosthetic leg,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
What struck her most was what Fox was willing to give up for a cause much bigger than himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe should have been out on dates, discovering the world,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet here he was, with one leg, hopping across Canada in all kinds of weather.\u201d<\/p>\n
She admired \u201chis courage, his pluck\u201d and wanted to help.<\/p>\n
Forty-five years later, that admiration has only deepened.<\/p>\n
Cook has lost family members to cancer and has watched the way treatment has changed over her lifetime. <\/p>\n
She remembers a time when simply hearing the word cancer brought fear of terrible pain and little hope.<\/p>\n
Today, she knows people living with cancer for years while taking daily medication and continuing to enjoy their families and watch their grandchildren grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt still scares a person but not with the panic felt years ago,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
That progress is why she believes continuing to raise money for cancer research matters.<\/p>\n
This coming Sunday, Sept. 20, Cook will once again put on her Terry Fox shirt and head to Stanley Park, where she plans to walk the route near Second Beach and Lost Lagoon.<\/p>\n
Daughter Wendy will walk alongside her for a few laps and a morale boost.<\/p>\n
Cook then plans to continue on her own, completing six or seven laps around the lagoon before heading home.<\/p>\n
And if last year is any indication, she may still be walking long after most others have finished.<\/p>\n
During the 2025 event, Cook was finishing her final laps after covering an estimated seven or eight miles when she encountered another senior woman walking alone around Lost Lagoon.<\/p>\n
The park was nearly deserted and the sun had gone down.<\/p>\n
The woman, who was Asian, was also wearing a Terry Fox shirt.<\/p>\n
As the two passed each other, they pointed to their shirts and laughed.<\/p>\n
Cook tried to strike up a conversation, but the woman simply smiled in response, leading Cook to believe she wasn\u2019t fluent in English.<\/p>\n
But no small talk was needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we were kindred spirits,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
Cook said the chance encounter was another reminder of how Terry Fox\u2019s extraordinary feat continues to resonate across cultures and generations.<\/p>\n
By the time Cook finally reached the event site, everyone was gone.<\/p>\n
The tents had been taken down.<\/p>\n
The finish arch had disappeared. <\/p>\n
The park was empty.<\/p>\n
But Cook wasn\u2019t finished then, and she isn\u2019t finished now.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s goal for Terry\u2019s Team is $15,000, with Cook hoping Trail-area supporters will once again help carry forward a dream that began with a young man on one leg and an extraordinary determination to change what a cancer diagnosis could mean.<\/p>\n
To donate to Cook\u2019s 2026 Terry Fox fundraising campaign, visit terryfox.org, click \u201cFind a Run\u201d on the home page and enter Joyce Cook in the search bar. Donations will continue to be accepted through her fundraising page into early October.<\/p>\n
At press time, Cook was 63 per cent toward her $15,000 goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will always be a Trailite in my heart,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
And this Sunday, for the 46th time, she\u2019ll be walking for Terry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty-five years after Terry Fox inspired a nation with his determination to find a cure for cancer, Joyce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[903,49,48,249267,55],"class_list":["post-899316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-kootenay","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}