The Terry Fox Run is returning to Sungod after two years at the North Delta Recreation Centre.
“Because of renos, we’re going back to our original [home] Sungod,” explained event organizer Patti Olson.
Olson has been organizing the Terry Fox Run in North Delta for over 20 years, taking the event over from the City of Delta in the mid-1990s along with a core group of seven other people.
“When I was in the school system [as a teaching assistant], we always used Terry Fox as the beginning of the year to inspire kids to dream big and to follow through,” Olson said. “It’s just something I think is super important that the new kids coming up would always hear. Just to keep the Terry Fox dream alive.”
Over the years, North Delta’s Terry Fox Run has been able to help do that, raising an average of $10,000 annually for cancer research.
And this year Olson is hoping to do the same, if not raise more.
The run, taking place on Sept. 16, will leave from Sungod Recreation Centre and travel through North Delta on one-kilometre, five-kilometre and 10-kilometre routes. The event will also feature a pancake breakfast provided by the Delta Fire Department after the race, beginning around 11:30 a.m.
Olson is hoping to see more teams come out to this year’s event, “like sports teams or community teams or business teams to do the run as a group,” she said, sitting in a coffee shop with fellow organizers Len Stroh and Jim Cessford.
“I just think it’s a better feel.”
Of course, not everything is set in stone for the Sept. 16 run. Although she’s hoping to get the usual 300 participants, there won’t be a firm number until people register on site the day of. And the team isn’t sure who will be speaking at the event this time.
Cessford, Delta’s former police chief and currently a candidate for mayor under the Independents Working for You banner, spoke at last year’s event about his daughter, who was diagnosed with T-cell leukemia when she was 18-months old. Now 32, she is considered completely cured, Cessford said.
Cessford won’t be speaking at this year’s event, and the organizing committee isn’t sure who will take up the role.
“We don’t have [a speaker] yet,” Olson explained, “so we’re working on that.”
“The sad part of it is that there’s too many people to choose from,” Cessford added. “I mean, if we had to search for somebody to speak because we couldn’t find anybody that had dealt with cancer, that would be a good news story.”
“That’s our ultimate goal,” Olson agreed. “Not to find a speaker.”
The North Delta Terry Fox Run will be held on Sunday, Sept. 16 at Sungod Recreation Centre (7815 112th St.). The race starts at 10 a.m., and participants are asked to arrive for registration at 9 a.m.
editor@northdeltareporter.com
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