A press release recently popped into my email inbox that caught my attention. The subject line read: “Lauren Small-Pennefather, Municipal Town Councillor for the Town of Montreal West to Run Across Canada for the Terry Fox Foundation.”
My first thought was, “Wow! That’s pretty darn impressive.” Running what I imagined would be upwards of 7,800 km is, to put it mildly, no easy task. And since the name Lauren Small-Pennefather was familiar, I decided to take a deeper look.
The long-time Montreal West resident has been taking part in the annual Terry Fox Run for the past 25 years and has been organizing MoWest’s run for the past 10. A director at Parks Canada, Small-Pennefather was also elected to the town’s council for the first time last November.
But upon further reading, the release clarified that Small-Pennefather, who is celebrating the milestone of turning age 50, aims to raise $50,000 by running 10 km in every province and territory across Canada, once per month. She started in Montreal on March 26 and did Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 1. Next will come Ottawa, Ontario on May 8 (Mother’s Day), followed by Calgary, Alberta in June. The remaining provinces will be scheduled later this year.
Now my second thought was, “Well, that’s different, but still pretty darn impressive.” Running more than 120 km — in all 10 provinces and two territories — is also no easy task. But why this formulation?
“I tried to find something that would fit into my schedule, and I figured that a marathon, or even half marathon, every month would be a little too ambitious with regards to training and trying to run the marathon. A comfortable run pace for me that I know that I can do is a 10 K, regardless of my training,” said Small-Pennefather, hours before her flight to Halifax.
Outside of those occasions when the federal civil servant will be on the road doing government business, Small-Pennefather said she will travel on her own time and on her own dime — tying in as many Parks Canada locations as she can.
“If there are opportunities for me to go somewhere related to work, or to other things that I do in life, I’ll take them. For example, I’m going to go do my run now in Halifax because my daughter has an Irish dancing competition there this weekend and I said since we’re taking her there for the competition, I might as well do my run.”
The last run is penciled in for early 2023 as a full 42-km marathon in British Columbia — the Fox family’s adoptive province — hopefully with Darrell, Terry’s brother, joining in.
“Obviously if it fits into his schedule,” said Small-Pennefather about Darrell Fox. “We have developed a friendship over the past 10 years, and we have stayed in touch. He’s even come out to our events.”
Small-Pennefather was a captivated and star-struck nine-year-old in 1980 when Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope, and she recalls being saddened when he died a year later on June 28, 1981. “I remember crying and thinking, ‘Wow, the world just lost such a wonderful soul at this early age, and that he had such courage to do what he did.’”
Years later, cancer hit close to home when Small-Pennefather’s mother was diagnosed with the disease, dying at age 56.
“It will be 30 years in July when I lost my mum,” she said. “She was a non smoker, but it started with lung cancer when I was about 15. And then a few years later, when I was 19, she was diagnosed with tonsil cancer, which is very rare. And then it metastasized to her pituitary glands. Those last two years, when I was 19 to 21, she was very, very sick.”
Cancer also came for her father, who died 13 years at age 80. “He was that old-school kind of a guy. He had colon cancer and he never went to get a colonoscopy. It’s a very curable cancer if you catch it early and it’s just unfortunate that he just never went and took care of his health in that way.”
Which reminds me…
In 1980, with one leg having been amputated due to cancer, Terry Fox embarked on an east to west cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research.
An almost lifelong connection to cancer is what motivates Small-Pennefather to continuously raise money and awareness for a disease that is no longer the automatic death sentence that it once was. The more than $800 million raised by the Terry Fox Foundation over the course of the last 40 years for cancer research has helped to make the disease much more survivable, but much more needs to be done, including repeating the message that an early diagnosis is key.
“I think the pandemic has been so hard on so many people and my worry is that too many haven’t gone to the doctor for two years and have perhaps missed important cancer diagnoses. So, I think this is not just raising awareness about the Terry Fox Run and Foundation but raising awareness about early detection and making sure that you get checked out,” said Small-Pennefather, adding, “And it’s also in honour of all the warriors past and present that I do this, because people that have gone through cancer are definitely warriors in my eyes.”
Pretty darn impressive.
To donate, visit http://www.terryfox.ca/FiftyForFox
