Terry Fox Monument

The Terry Fox Monument, situated in the outskirts of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, is a public monument commemorating cancer research activist Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. The monument, which depicts Fox is open to the public and offers a panoramic view of Thunder Bay and its surroundings. The statue was created by sculptor Manfred Pervich to mark the place where Fox was forced to halt his run on August 31, 1980. It is not located at the exact spot where he ended the run, however, but is approximately four kilometres further west; the exact spot where Fox ended the run is noted only by a private marker not readily visible from the road. The monument was dedicated on June 26, 1982, just days before the first anniversary of Fox's death, by Governor General Edward Schreyer. Originally located directly along the route of Highway 17, the statue was later relocated to a dedicated park overlooking the highway to accommodate the widening of the highway route. By 1989, municipal politicians in Thunder Bay were beginning to call for a provincial tourist information centre, with washrooms on site, to be built at the monument due to reports that some visitors to the site were urinating and defecating in the bushes surrounding the site. An information centre was built on the site at the time of relocation. Following the monument's relocation in the 1990s, several incidents of vandalism were reported on the site, including littering with empty alcohol bottles and hypodermic needles, amethysts being pried off the statue's base, damage to the onsite washrooms, one of the statue's hands being sawed off, and an aborted partial attempt to saw off the statue's head.