Bill Vigars once turned to Terry Fox and promised to try and make him live on forever.
The St. Thomas native has made good on that promise with his just-released tribute, Terry & Me, The Inside Story of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope.
In April of 1980, Terry Fox set out from St. John’s, Newfoundland to run across Canada to raise funds for cancer research.
The initial response to the Marathon of Hope was slow to materialize.
That began to change when the Canadian Cancer Society assigned an individual to accompany Terry to promote and drum up support as he made his way westward into Quebec and Ontario.
That someone was Vigars.
His time on the road with this Canadian icon was the inspiration behind Terry & Me.
In a conversation late last month with Vigars from his home in B.C., he recalls how he had just been hired by the Ontario Division of the Canadian Cancer Society to undertake fundraising and public relations.
“In April, Terry was on the road for three or four days and my boss came to me and said there is a kid who is going to run across Canada on one leg, do you want to see what you can do for him?
“And that’s how it started. It was meant to be, I guess.”
Vigars describes his first impression after talking with Fox in Nova Scotia.
Vigars was living in Toronto at the time and began making arrangements for when Terry would enter Ontario.
“When you get to Ontario what do you want to do and he said I want to meet Bobby Orr, Darryl Sittler, I want to go to the CN Tower, I want to go to a Blue Jays game and I want to meet Trudeau.
“So, I said call me back tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do.
“I got on the phone and when he called back the next day, I was able to say Okay the Blue Jays are on, the CN Tower is on, Sittler is going to meet you, Bobby Orr is going to be in Europe but he’ll come and find you somewhere down the road and I can’t find Trudeau, but we did track him down.”
At 18 year of age, Bill Vigars was working at CHLO radio in St. Thomas and that training ground proved valuable far beyond what he ever could have imagined.
Vigars’ ability to wing it through any situation came in handy when Quebec Provincial Police wanted to direct Fox away from major highways.
Vigars recounts how a call to a French-speaking friend and some stretching of the truth resolved the impasse.
Vigars will appear at Lockwood Books, 488 Talbot Street in St. Thomas, from 1 to 3 p.m. Friday (Sept. 8) for a book signing.
