A diehard Toronto fan of the Terry Fox Run raises $2,700 at Wilket Creek Park

Mia Craig would run the 10 k race no matter where she is, but her favourite place to run is the Wilket Creek Park

Mia Craig was diagnosed with cancer when she was 23.  Zia Zarawar/Toronto Observer
Why a Toronto woman returns to Wilket Creek each September to run for Terry Fox. Zia Zarawar/Toronto Observer

Mia Craig, 41, has been a part of the Terry Fox run ever since she was in middle school.

Craig, a resident of Toronto, has also been a cancer survivor for 18 years. She was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, and her treatment lasted for about six months at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. She had a complete thyroidectomy, a surgery where they removed the entire gland along with tumour, she said.

“I had radioactive iodine treatments following the surgery and now I take a pill everyday for the rest of my life,” Craig said.

She runs the Terry Fox 10K event at Wilket Creek Park almost every year and if she is not there, she runs it somewhere else.

“One year, I was in Miami and I ran it while I was on vacation,” Craig said.

The woman’s four-year-old daughter, three-year-old son, husband and the rest of her family come out to Wilket Creek Park every year because they are huge supporters of the Terry Fox run.

“They know who Terry Fox is and they know what cancer is,” Craig said.

She said the Terry Fox group is an amazing foundation. She appreciates the fact that they run on such a small paid staff, and everybody else around the world is volunteer based. For every dollar donated to the foundation, 89 cents go directly to cancer research, Craig said.

“I decide years ago that I was going to pick one organization to raise money for and this year I raised about $2,700 dollars,” Craig said.

Ontario’s Premier Kathleen Wynne told the crowd that in 1980, she was living in Holland, and she was watching Terry Fox’s progress in his original run on TV. The premier said she got back to Canada in 1984 and started doing the annual Terry Fox runs.

“The run has grown but the cause remains the same,” Wynne said.

This year marked the 37th Terry Fox Foundation’s run. More than a thousand people participated in the run at the Wilket Creek location, which has raised around $10 million for the Terry Fox Foundation since 1980.

Twitter posts from the Wilket Creek Park Terry Fox Run 2017.

About this article

By:
Posted: Jan 14 2018 4:13 pm
Edition:
Filed under: News
Multimedia:
Topics: