He ran across Newfoundland before continuing on to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. He made it into Quebec and then to Ottawa, where he visited with the Prime Minister, but it wasn't until Southern Ontario that the media noticed what this incredible Canadian was doing - jogging across Canada on one good leg to collect funds for cancer research.However, in Thunder Bay, he became ill only to discover that the cancer had returned to his lungs. Terry Fox was extremely amazing because he never gave up. None. But he had been unwell again and had to call off his Marathon of Hope, a daily marathon that he had been running for 143 days. He ran 5,373 kilometres (3,339 miles), more than halfway across the country, and there is now a statue of him in Thunder Bay.He stated that he wanted to raise $1 for every Canadian, and he did. But on June 28, 1981, he died. It was one month shy of his 23rd birthday. He became the youngest Companion of the Order of Canada. He also earned the Lou Marsh Award as the country's best athlete, was named Canada's Newsmaker of the Year in 1981, and his name is now associated with schools, theatres, and even a mountain in the RockiesI'm not sure how many times I've done this run. At least thirty, probably more. My favorite 10-kilometer route winds through a gorgeous river valley, down to Lake Ontario, and then across the shoreline. You may ask any runner, but no sport or physical exercise is more relaxing for the spirit than this. Indeed, jogging has the ability to relax one's mind and provide a sense of calm and comfort, as well as time to ponder.
My wife's Aunt Mary, who she adored
died of cancer in February. Only four months later, Mary's 59-year-old husband, Andy, died. My wife and I got married in their garden. My son's mother-in-law died of cancer in April, and we know of others, including those close to us, who are dealing with this terrible disease right now.It is free of bias, as are all diseases. It affects the elderly. They are young. The affluent. The poor. And people of every colour, ethnicity, and religion. Cancer does not discriminate and affects everyone, which may explain why, over the last 40 years, the annual Terry Fox Run has raised more than $850 million for cancer research and is held all over the world.People run in Hong Kong. India. Malaysia. Dubai, Ireland. The United Kingdom. They operate in Sydney, Australia; Santa Monica, California; and Sapporo, Japan. Everyone runs for Terry Fox.I have a black-and-white picture of him on my office wall, and when I run the Terry Fox Trail down that river valley, there will be images of him displayed every kilometer. The image of a motivated young guy with one working leg.He would undoubtedly be thrilled to learn that so much money has been raised for cancer research in his name. Approximately $850 million. The irony is that the world spends significantly more on weapons every day. Yes, it is right. You know, I believe we can all learn a lot from Terry Fox, and you don't have to be a runner.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary
of the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, UBC law professor Brian Bird authored a four-part series1 for The Hub that traced Canada's constitutional history from Confederation to the present, concluding with some comments on our constitutional future. It is an intellectual and engaging tour through more than a century and a half of legal history, and I suggest it to anyone interested in understanding 1982 as a watershed moment in Canada's modern history. In my own, more polemical series, I argue that by 1982, Pierre Trudeau's constitutional vision, based on Enlightenment values of liberal rationalism, had become out of date, and that Canada's new Constitution has thrived not on Trudeau's intended terms, but as a broadly illiberal exercise of irrational judicial power.The complete four-part series is available online in full.Trudeau's rational follyWith respect to Virginia Woolf, on or around June 1967, human nature changed. Woolf noticed that the transition to modernism was gradual and not abrupt. However, a transition occurred, and "when human relations change, religion, conduct, politics, and literature change as well." So it was during the Summer of Love.
It was one of those historical occasions
when a subculture evolved into a zeitgeist. The communal flophouses of San Francisco, as grimly chronicled by Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe, may have been the most unlikely place for a cultural revolution since the rat-infested cafes of Paris's Latin Quarter, but that is where the world's eyes landed in 1967, and they stayed long enough to imprint a psychedelic distortion of reality on the Western consciousness.The Monterey Pop Festival, held from June 16 to 18, marked the pinnacle of this cultural period. John Phillips composed the flower-child song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" for the festival. The song begins with a lovely invitation to join "gentle people with flowers in their hair" in a midsummer love-in, but then abruptly switches to an urgent prophetic voice, stating that "all across the nation…there's a new generation with a new explanation." The singer promises more than simply floral reverie: "people in motion," a generation on the go.
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