Support is swelling across B.C. for Terry Fox to get on the next $5 bill.
The Bank of Canada launched its nomination process for a new bill earlier this year and everyone from the City of Port Coquitlam to a Terry Fox Run organizer in the area are hoping the Canadian hero will make the cut.
In a video posted to Twitter, Dave Teixeira talked about why he thought Fox deserved to be the face of the new $5 bill.
“Terry was never doing anything he did, the Marathon of Hope, raising money for cancer, for anything else but to raise money. He wasn’t looking for fame or fortune,” Teixeira said.
Fox is one of Canada’s most iconic heroes. Although he was in Winnipeg in 1958, his family moved to Surrey in 1966 and then to Coquitlam in 1968, when he was just 10 years old.
Fox was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, in 1977, and had his right leg amputated later that year. Three years later, Fox would begin his famed Marathon of Hope by dipping his leg into the waters off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. He hoped to raise $1 for every Canadian.
Fox planned to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research but the cancer spread to his lungs and he was forced to stop just outside of Thunder Bay, 143 days and 5,373 kilometres into the Marathon of Hope. By the end of his run he had raised $1.7 million.
Fox died on June 28, 1981, at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, just one month shy of his 23rd birthday. By that point, the fundraising efforts that grew from Fox’ dream have reached more than $24.17 million, or one dollar for every Canadian at the time.
Teixeira hopes that if the $5 comes to be, every Canadian will do just one thing.
“We donate that ‘Fox Fiver’ to the Terry Fox Foundation,” he said. “If 40 million of us across Canada do that, $200 million in this 40th anniversary year of the Marathon of Hope, that would be pretty awesome.”
To nominate someone for the new $5 bill, visit https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/banknoteable-5/. Nomination are open until March 11.
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