Crossing the Finish Line For Lost Loved Ones

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

When we lose someone special, people often find ways to help complete their unfinished work. Many of us participate in events to honour our heroes, to recognize the fallen, to reflect on the loss of friends and family.

There is often a connection between athletic achievement and our remembrance of those lost. The connection between our memories and our athletic achievements is increasingly harnessed to raise funds for health-related causes – from diabetes and heart disease to leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma. At the top for many of these fundraising causes is cancer – a disease about half of us will experience in our lifetimes.

The power of remembrance as an athletic motivator has a history dating back to 1920 when Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne called on his team to “Win one for the Gipper,” their mate George Gipp who died during the season. The story of the Gipper has resonated for decades.
So has the story of Terry Fox.

Thirty years ago, the handsome young man with the prosthetic leg dipped his foot into the Atlantic Ocean before beginning a run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. Running the marathon distance every day, he slowly captured the hearts of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. When he had to quit because the cancer had spread to his lungs, there was an outpouring of grief and donations to his cause from around the world.

After he died June 28, 1981, at age 22, Canadians picked up his mantle and carried on a legacy that has run for 30 years and raised half a billion dollars.
 
We run for remembrance to honour heroes like Terry Fox when it turns out they were battling impossible odds. Sometimes we also run to protest.
Consider the appalling events of March 3, 2005 near Mayerthorpe, Alta. On that day, four Mounties were killed by a man with a long criminal record and an obsessive hatred of police. The slaying of four police constables – Anthony Gordon, Leo Johnston, Brock Myrol and Peter Schiemann – led to the creation of a local park dedicated to their memory and to the Fallen Four Marathon. The event draws about 800 runners a year.

On a much larger scale is Belgium’s In Flanders Fields Marathon. The race starts on the Flemish coast and finishes at the historic city of Ypres.
Along the flat roads are the fields where many of the horrors of the First World War took place. According to race director André Mingneau, running this course “may help to keep people’s mind open against useless violence and terror. That’s why our English, American and Canadian friends talk about (this race) as a ‘peace marathon’ or ‘a marathon for peace’.”

This idea is not difficult to understand. Imagine yourself in a marathon running through the land where the Battle of Passchendaele and other struggles of that war occurred. You can’t help thinking of the mud, death, futility and wretched conditions of trench warfare.

Yet, as you finish that race you value peace even though you may never have experienced war. In 1996, three gay triathletes founded the Pride and Remembrance Run, which became an annual 5k fundraising run and walk coinciding with Toronto’s Pride Week. The event remembers people who died of AIDS. More than other memorial events, the race is quirky and fun. It combines no-holds barred celebration by the gay community with personal achievement. In keeping with Toronto’s world-famous Pride celebrations, odd costumes are everywhere. One moment you may see men running in bridal dresses. The next you may see the Queen of England parading down the street. Ahead of the pack are hard-core runners in standard running gear.

The Pride and Remembrance Run is “a really remarkable expression of community spirit and dynamism and engagement” said race director Alan Belaiche. “The number of organizations that have gained not only financial resources but also profile in the community has been of inestimable value to people and to our community. The feeling that comes from raising so much money for beneficiaries, it’s just unmatched for me.”

Last summer a remarkable young woman named Janice Plewes – an extraordinary athlete and the mother of three young children – died in Penticton while she was on her bike training for her fourth Ironman.

The young driver behind the wheel of a car failed to yield the right of way at a difficult intersection.

Plewes’ death touched hundreds in Calgary, where she grew up and lived with her family. To commemorate her life, her family and friends gathered with their bicycles at the Highwood Pass on the eastern slope of the Rockies near Calgary earlier this year.

The Janice Plewes memorial event was held June 12, on the last weekend of traffic-free riding before the highway reopened after its annual winter closure.

The message from her family said, “Please invite anyone you think would enjoy a day of cycling in the mountains in memory of a good friend.” The road was bright with bicycles and colourful riding gear when race day arrived.

Sometimes, death can inspire athletic excellence before mourning even begins.

An extraordinary example of such inspiration occurred during the recent Winter Olympics, when figure skater Joannie Rochette skated to a bronze medal after her mother died of a massive coronary after arriving in Vancouver to watch her daughter compete. Rochette’s inspirational performance was honoured with the first Terry Fox Award for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Several months later, she became the honourary spokeswoman for a fundraising campaign to support awareness about heart disease in women.
No organization has more effectively used fitness events as fundraisers than the ones fighting cancer.

The Terry Fox Run was the first mega-run to raise money for cancer. Its amazing half-billion dollar fundraising achievement took place without organizers asking for a minimum donation from participants.

The message has always been “Give what you can, in remembrance of Terry.” Thirty years later, cancer is still the biggest motivator for fundraising events, but  the fundraising system has dramatically changed.

For example, the two-day Ride to Conquer Cancer was a wild success when it debuted in B.C. and Alberta last year. The cost of participation is to raise at least $2,500 for the cause, although some overachievers raised as much as $50,000.

On the coast, 1,700 participants took part in what the event’s website describes as “an epic cycling journey from Vancouver to Seattle” – a two-day, 282 kilometre effort. In Alberta, a similar number of participants rode a beautiful 180 km course along the eastern slopes of the Rockies. In each province, the event raised approximately $6.9 million, with proceeds going to the B.C. Cancer Foundation and the Alberta Cancer Board.

The Weekend to End Women’s Cancers is a two-day, 60 km walk with events in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and elsewhere in Canada. To participate, you need to raise a minimum of $2,000. Over the past five years these events enabled the Alberta Cancer Board to invest $21 million in cancer research, and the B.C. Cancer Foundation to invest $15 million.

A veteran of five of these walks is Rejeanne Taylor, a breast cancer survivor from Calgary. The first four years she participated to celebrate the fact that she had dodged a bullet. This year, however, is different. “I will be remembering a good friend – Monika Brunk of Hamburg – who recently died,” she said. “I’ve had other friends who died of cancer, but she is the first to die of breast cancer. I will be walking for her.”