After seven years of searching, the Terry Fox Foundation has finally found a home for tens of thousands of artifacts from the cancer research activist’s historic run across the country.
The Royal BC Museum in Victoria announced last week that, for the next 20 years, it will preserve a collection of memorabilia that had been at risk of damage because there had been no place to store it long-term where anyone could see it.
“I can get better sleep because, you know, the collection is currently in a storage locker, and that is not the right place and space for Terry’s memorabilia,” said Darrell Fox, Terry Fox’s younger brother, in an interview.
Terry Fox, a distance runner raised in Surrey and Port Coquitlam, B.C., lost his right leg to cancer at age 19. With an artificial leg three years later, on April 12, 1980, he began his Marathon of Hope in St. John’s to raise money for cancer research. He covered 5,373 kilometres before he was forced to quit on Sept. 1, just outside Thunder Bay.
Terry Fox raised $1.7-million from the run, but he inspired yearly fundraising runs across the country and around the world. He died in 1981.
The memorabilia collection is massive, including tens of thousands of items, including cards and letters, Darrell Fox said. There’s journals and the water from when his brother dipped his leg in the Atlantic Ocean to begin his trek.
“There’s the sock he wore on his artificial leg that he never took off. There are the Adidas shoes that he wore and ran in. There’s the artificial leg that he ran on. He had a spare, but Terry had his favourite leg, and the leg that is in the collection is the leg that was responsible for most of the 3,339 miles that Terry ran during the Marathon of Hope,” Darrell Fox said.
Tracey Drake, chief executive officer of the Royal BC Museum, said the collection nicely fits with the museum’s mandate.
“I think that’s one of the roles of provincial museums, as we collect and share our collective history,” Ms. Drake said.
She said the first step is for curators to assess the condition of the collection and whether any restoration is needed. It will take six to eight months before it is fully moved into the museum and then more time to decide how to display the artifacts.
“Regarding exhibitions, there are so many opportunities that we can talk about with the Fox family, things like a travelling exhibition that benefits not just the provincial museum but perhaps across the province and maybe across the country,” Ms. Drake said.
“There’s certainly an option they’re thinking about in 2030, which will mark the 50th anniversary. I think there’s an opportunity there for an incredible show.”
In the meantime, the museum currently displays Terry’s 1980 Ford Econoline van, which he and his family used as a support vehicle for the Marathon of Hope.
Lana Popham, B.C.’s Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport, helped arrange for the museum to get the collection and said it was an emotional process.
“I’m not a big crier, but when I saw his running shoes, it literally brought tears to my eyes. There’s just something so emotional, and British Columbians and Canadians are so connected, that this is absolutely the right place for it to be right now,” she said.
Canadian home prices were flat in February after falling for five straight months, a potential sign that the country’s housing market may be rebounding after last year’s slump.
The national home price index, which excludes the highest priced properties, was $719,400 last month, which was the same as in January, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association or CREA.
The last time the home price index rose was from July to August last year, a month after the Bank of Canada shocked the market with back-to-back interest rate hikes. The surprise move had led to a slowdown in sales and a drop in home prices as many would-be homebuyers had a tougher time qualifying for a large enough mortgage to make a purchase.
But now that the central bank has kept its benchmark interest rate steady at 5 per cent for more than six months, would-be buyers are starting to gain confidence that borrowing costs will no longer continue to rise. Prospective buyers who delayed their purchases last year are starting to look again and make bids. The real estate industry said there is pent up demand after months of lacklustre activity.
“People are itching to get going,” said Samantha Villiard, regional vice president for RE/MAX real estate agency. “More people are slowly getting comfortable getting back into the market,” she said.
Realtors have reported an increase in showings and bids in areas that experienced heavy competition during the pandemic’s real estate boom. That includes the suburbs of Toronto and Chilliwack, inland of Vancouver. Over the past month, the home price index rose in Oakville, Milton, Hamilton and Burlington, as well as Chilliwack.
At the same time, the home price index continued to fall in other markets that overheated when interest rates were nearly zero. That includes some parts of Ontario’s cottage country and less populated cities like Guelph.
Across the country, home sales fell 3.1 per cent from January to February after removing seasonal influences. B.C. and Ontario, the country’s largest real estate markets, led the way down with homes sales declining 7 per cent month over month in both. That followed a flurry of sales in December and January. Last month’s volume of sales is still higher than in the fall when homebuyers were still adjusting to the higher interest rates.
TD economist Rishi Sondhi said that activity is still below pre-pandemic days due to lower sales in Ontario, B.C. and Quebec. “This suggests that significant pent-up demand remains in these markets,” he said in a research note.
New listings rose 1.6 per cent from January to February with more homeowners putting their properties up for sale in B.C. and Alberta.
Editor’s note: This article has been update to clarify that Chilliwack is located inland of Vancouver.