Elora students walk, run for Addison Hill, Terry Fox

ELORA – Residents here know firsthand how childhood cancer can impact communities. 

Students at Elora Public School started their day on Sept. 18 with an assembly about two young people with big legacies: Terry Fox and Addison Hill. 

After losing a leg to cancer in 1977, Fox set out to run across Canada in 1980 to raise money for cancer research. His run was cut short when cancer returned to his lungs. He had run 5,373 kilometres and raised over $24 million before he died in 1981. Canadians have continued his Marathon of Hope ever since, and to date the campaign has raised over $1 billion.  

Addison Hill was an Elora Public School student who launched Team Addy to fundraise for cancer research, and helped to organize a Team Addy Family Fun Day on July 8 – her 14th birthday. Hill died two days later, but Team Addy has gone on to raise over $986,475 to date.   

During the assembly, student emcee Alex Winter described how Addison “truly made a huge impact with everyone she encountered and left a legacy here that we all continue to learn from.” 

Along with other student emcees Mae and Fiona, he asked the students how they positively impact the people around them. “Do people smile when they think about you?  

“There’s no doubt we smile when we think about Addy and Terry.” 

The student emcees then read a picture book to the students, with the images projected on a screen at the front of the room.

The book was T is for Terry: An ABC of Courage by Denise Dias, and it tells Fox’s story, from a happy childhood with his siblings to the journey of his Marathon of Hope. 

The emcees compared Fox’s long-lasting legacy with Hill’s, whose “spirit lives on through her family, friends, teachers and community members.” 

Because of research funded by Team Addy, some of the children who receive cancer diagnoses recover and go on to live long lives, they said. 

Sick Kids Hospital has started a whole fundraising campaign inspired by Hill (Heal the Future). There is also a nursing station in the hospital named after her and a documentary about her story, presented by the Ontario Basketball Association and available to watch for free on Youtube. 

“Talk about making a legacy,” the emcees said to the gym full of Elora students. “Can we get a round of applause for that?” 

Jessica and Dave Hill, Addison’s parents, attended the assembly and Jessica described her daughter as funny, stubborn and “a little bit of a pain sometimes.”

Addison loved movies and making TikTok videos, and loved going to school, even after her cancer diagnosis, Jessica said. 

During Addison’s nine months at Sick Kids, she “saw many kids fighting cancer, and asked the same question Terry did: ‘What can I do?’

“She wanted better treatments – she wanted kids to have a chance,” Jessica said. “Cancer may have taken her life, but it didn’t change her purpose.” 

Jessica talked to the students about “the power of one: one person, one idea, one dream to do something, anything, that idea can change the lives of thousands or even millions of people,” Jessica said.  

She encouraged the students to “think of Terry not as someone famous, but as one person with an idea.”

He asked “What can I do?” and didn’t worry whether his idea was too big – “he just did it ... and now it belongs to all of us,” Jessica said. 

“Terry and Addy both taught us you don’t have to change the world; you just have to change one little piece of it, and when we all do that together, we all change the world. 

“That’s the power of one, and that’s why we’re here today.

“You might be thinking, ‘but I’m just one kid,’ but so was Terry and so was Addy,” she said, and they were both brave enough to try, because “they believed doing something was better than doing nothing.”  

Jessica encouraged the students not to wait until they’re older to make a difference, and said their “power of one doesn’t have to look like Terry’s and doesn’t have to look like Addy’s – it belongs to you.” 

After the assembly, the students headed out to the trail that connects the school to the Wellington County Museum and Archives to participate in the Marathon of Hope. 

Many students wore stickers that said “I’m finishing it for ...” followed by the name of a loved one, or Terry, or Addy.

The money raised will go to sarcoma research at Sick Kids through Team Addy and cancer research through the Terry Fox Foundation.