Donna Ball returned home Tuesday after a 10-day trip to B.C. The Newfoundland native had been on a family vacation, touring the province to see the sights, visit relatives and take in summer activities.
But Ball was also on a special mission.
She wanted to visit Port Coquitlam, the hometown of Terry Fox, the young man she had met in St. John's in 1978 when he competed in wheelchair basketball with Team BC in the Canadian Games for the Physically Disabled.
Ball was 18 then and taking registration. It was her first summer job. It was late August and she remembers Fox and his teammate, Dan Wesley, arriving at her desk. They were good looking and a lot of fun. Fox's smile stuck with her.
There were other athletes there, too, such as the young man who would become the Man in Motion, Rick Hansen. And she made friends with about a dozen of them and corresponded with them afterwards. But with all the letters she mailed out, only two athletes responded. One was Terry Fox.
Ball, who last week met with Fox's brother, Fred, and visited the Terry Fox statues and landmarks around town and at SFU, read out the first of Fox's letters to her at the provincial Terry Fox Foundation office in PoCo. Fred was there to hear his late brother's words, as was his niece, Jessica Alder, the foundation's BC/Yukon director Donna White, and Bruce Moore, Fox's high school basketball coach and the man who annually MC's the Terry Fox Hometown Run.
Fred Fox had heard Ball read the letter two years ago during a CBC radio interview in Newfoundland and said, "I was struck with emotion.
"Hearing Terry's words and how he felt in seeing others suffer from the causes of cancer had a profound impact on me," Fred Fox said. "We'd heard Terry talk in 1980 about why he was running across Canada but it was inspiring to hear him express himself in such a thoughtful way, a year before he began the Marathon of Hope."
In his hand-written letter, dated April 20, 1979, Fox talks about his struggle with cancer and his despair over the physical and mental condition of other patients he met during his treatments. He also speaks about his love for sports, his interest in becoming a Christian, his determination to change his outlook and raise money for disabled sports and cancer research.
Ball received two letters from Fox before he returned to St. John's in 1980 to start his Marathon of Hope. Ball's mother saw an article in the local newspaper about Fox training for the cross-country trip that week.
She called the Canadian Cancer Society and they directed her to the Holiday Inn, where Fox and his friend, Doug Alward, had been staying. The night before the start of his historic journey, in which he ran a marathon a day for 143 days before being stopped by cancer, Ball reunited with Fox and they talked about his upcoming adventure.
"We had a great chat," she recalled. "We talked a lot about why he was undertaking the run across Canada. What I remember about that night is that he talked a lot about the children who suffered from cancer and the impact that had on him."
Before she left the hotel room, Ball asked if Fox needed anything before his journey began. He requested a pennant with "St. John's" on it. The next morning, as Fox and Alward were loading the van, Ball dropped off the souvenir and a good luck card.
"I had always wondered what had happened to those," she said, "but when Fred took me to the display at the [Terry Fox] library, I saw a picture of Terry and there was the pennant on his bed. It was quite a flashback for me and it was a real special moment."
Ball said she'll now use the photos she snapped on her all-things-Terry visit to add to her slideshow. Since 2003, she has been talking to school children in the St. John's area about Fox's legacy and the need to raise money for cancer research. In her presentations, she plays a recording of her reading out Fox's letters. "I can't read them out loud," she said, "because I get too emotional."
She makes the effort because "I believe in what Terry did. I think I have these letters for a purpose. It took me a long time to figure out what they were for but I think it's to continue promoting his cause and promoting him and the foundation."
The two letters - and the original envelopes with a 17-cent stamp, postmarked "Port Coquitlam" and with a return address of 3337 Morrill St. - are now out of the suitcase where they had been stored in the basement for about 20 years and tucked away in a safe.
And because of her trip to PoCo, she now knows the places Fox spoke of in his letters.
"It was all made very real to me," she said. "Although it took me 32 years to get here, it really brought closure for me."
On Monday, Ball's last day in B.C., the family visited Stanley Park, the place where Fox had planned to end his Marathon of Hope in 1981. As they drove through the park, she said, "I just sort of closed my eyes and thought about, well, what would this have been like? I could imagine the crowds just lining the roads by the thousands."
The 31st annual Terry Fox Run will be held across the country on Sunday, Sept. 18, including four run sites in the Tri-Cities: Coquitlam (10 a.m. at Blue Mountain Park); Port Moody (10 a.m. at city hall); Anmore (noon at the village hall); and Port Coquitlam, Fox's hometown (10 a.m. at Hyde Creek community centre). For the latter, Terry Fox's father, Rolly, will be a guest of honour. Meanwhile, cancer survivors will be at the start of the runs wearing red shirts, identifying them as Terry's Team members. Cancer survivors wanting to lead the runs are asked to call the run organizers before Sept. 18 to sign up.
