Local Terry Fox Run champion honored at this year’s event in Sarnia

A prize awarded each year to the largest team entered in Sarnia’s Terry Fox Run is now known as the Leo Arts Memorial Trophy.

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The newly re-named trophy was passed Sunday to the 30-member team, Wendy’s Walkers, during the 44th Sarnia run and walk at Canatara Park which, according to an early estimate, raised about $48,000 for the Terry Fox Foundation and cancer research.

Organizer Laurie Rome said Arts, who passed away in February just before his 93rd birthday, assembled an annual team of family and friends for many years that often won the trophy during the about eight years it has been awarded.

“I feel he is right beside me today,” said his wife, Francien Arts.

She took part in a presentation at the start of Sunday’s run and walk.

Daughter Helen Arts-Smith said her father raised more than $170,000 over the years.

A retired insulator, he was diagnosed with cancer while in his 70s and after treatment decided to get involved in the annual run and walk.

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“It was his project the rest of his life,” Arts-Smith said. “He spent at least half the year planning for it; recruiting people and walking the neighborhood getting donations.”

Arts-Smith said they plan to continue assembling the team for the walk in the years ahead.

Francien said her late husband admired Fox’s endurance. The 18-year-old BC man who lost a leg to cancer set out to run across the country in 1980 on a prosthetic limb and completed 5,373 kilometers before cancer returned and he was forced to stop.

“He never gave up,” she said. “And that was Leo’s motto too.”

By the time Fox died in June 1981, he had reached his goal of raising the equivalent of $1 from every Canadian for cancer research.

Since then, runs in his memory have raised more than $850 million for the Terry Fox Foundation.

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Jeff Rothwell, who accepted the trophy from Arts on behalf of Wendy’s Walkers, said the team is named for his mother, Wendy Rothwell, who died with leukemia nine years ago.

“We miss and we love her,” he said. “Cancer sucks. It’s not anything anyone should have to go through.”

The family has entered a team in the run and walked for about a decade now and is a previous winner of the trophy, Rothwell said.

Participants were invited during the walk to write dedications on a Terry Fox poster typed to the stage in the park.

Kitty Ayers of Sarnia dedicated her walk to her father, George Ayers, who died in 2005.

She said her sister was also traveling from Bayfield to take part Sunday.

“We’ve been running before dad passed, and ever since,” Ayers said.

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“He was so wonderful, a hero and so giving,” she said about Fox. “It gives me goosebumps when I think about it.”

Oncologist Dr. Ken Yoshida spoke to the crowd about recent advances in cancer research and treatment, and Tracey Tully, this year’s Terry’s Team Member in Sarnia, spoke about her experience being diagnosed with a rare lung cancer five years ago at the age of 35.

“Here I am, five years in,” Tully said. “If I could do a backflip, I would.”

“It’s research funding events like this and people like you that are continuing to help stories like mine,” she said.

Rome estimated as many as 350 people took part this year.

“It went amazing,” she said.

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