The Terry Fox run is an annual tradition in London, where hundreds of people sign up to run in honour of the late Terry Fox, to raise awareness of and to raise funds for cancer and cancer research. “For our site, it was about $126,000,” said Pete Ferguson, a member of the Terry Fox run committee as well as a cancer researcher. “The total will be close to half a million dollars by the time everybody’s [schools in London] done.”
Funds raised by the Terry Fox foundation go to a “national pot”, which is then used to help fund different cancer research laboratories. The more money that the Terry Fox foundation raises, the more laboratories can benefit from this funding, including smaller, local laboratories.
“Right now, there’s over 600 projects that are funded by the foundation,” said Ferguson. “In the 46 years that it’s been going on, it’s raised over a billion dollars now.”
Despite the large amount of funds the Terry Fox run is raising, more donations are always welcome, especially since cancer research is very expensive. “ the people that do it have to be paid, that money comes from various sources, including the Terry Fox Foundation,” said Ferguson. “Chemicals, some of the machinery that we use, it has advanced cancer research greatly, but those things are expensive.”
With all these costs associated with cancer research, and with how much the Terry Fox foundation contributes to cancer research, Ferguson thinks that cancer research would be nowhere as advanced as it is now without the foundations help. “Cancer research and a lot of research is notoriously underfunded by the government,” said Ferguson. So other fundraisers have been so important in advancing cancer research, and Terry Fox Foundation is a major part of that.”
“Cancer research would not have advanced as much as it has today without fundraising and charity fundraising and, of course, the contribution of the Terry Fox run.”
