In a small town in New Brunswick sits a very large tribute to the memory of Terry Fox.
At least for the next few months.
The Hunter Brothers Farm in Florenceville-Bristol has created a giant corn field maze of Fox to commemorate the 35th anniversary of his Marathon of Hope.
“We’re always looking for ideas,” says Chip Hunter, who has been carving corn mazes into his farm for 17 years. It took a year of planning for the Fox maze to come to fruition.
“We’d like it to be Canadian, we’d like it to be educational, and we’d like there to be a good picture, a good graphic that you can use with it. This had all three immediately.”
“We thought that would be a terrific maze because of the image. It’s an iconic image of him running.”
Fox, born in Winnipeg and raised in Port Coquitlam, was just 19 when he diagnosed with cancer and had his leg amputated.
In 1980, following months of training, he began his Marathon of Hope in St. John’s, Newfoundland, running the equivalent of at least one marathon a day to raise money for cancer research.
Hunter remembers it vividly.
“My friend came into my yard, came roaring by, screaming ‘Terry Fox is coming by! Let’s set the lawn chairs on the front yard and watch,'” he says.
“We could see the RCMP car, and then Terry came by. We stopped him, and he…took a picture with us.”
Fox ran for 143 days and 5,373 kilometres before he was forced to stop in Thunder Bay due to cancer returning. He died the next year, but not before over $25 million had been raised for cancer research.
Since then, over $700 million has been raised by the Terry Fox Foundation.
Hunter hopes his maze, which includes trivia questions about Fox, will help add to the total.