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One of the greatest challenges -- and honors -- I've ever had was being asked to write a screenplay about Terry Fox, one of Canada's greatest heroes. In 1977, at the age of 19, he was a member of Simon Fraser University's top flight basketball team when he was diagnosed with bone cancer (osteogenic sarcoma) and had his leg amputated. While in the hospital, Terry was deeply moved by the suffering of the young cancer patients around him, and he was angered by the lack of money being put into cancer research. So he decided to run across Canada to raise money for research along with people's awareness. On April 12, 1980, he began his Marathon of Hope in St..Johns, Newfoundland. He ran 3,339 miles in 143 days, averaging 26 miles a day, the equivalent of a marathon each day without a break -- on one leg. Terry didn't make it all the way across Canada, but he captured the world's imagination -- and heart.
Terry is one of Canada's greatest icons and everybody involved was obsessed with getting it right. Through the fifty drafts or so that I wrote over a six month period, I kept thinking about Terry running a marathon a day with a prosthetic leg and running shoes that were primitive by today's standards, convinced that he could do the impossible. I just kept his words in mind: "Go one mile at a time." In the end, I think we've made a film that Terry would have liked.
 More On Terry
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