The 40th annual Marathon of Hope took place virtually on Sunday, September 20th to celebrate the remarkable Terry Fox and raise money to support cancer research. While we were not able to run together due to this year’s challenges related to COVID-19, members of the PRiME team laced up their running shoes to ensure that this great Canadian tradition lives on.
Dr. Christine Allen, Associate VP & Vice-Provost, Strategic Initiatives and PRiME faculty member, joined Team PRiME summarizing in a tweet that the run was “good healthy fun and a great cause.” Like Dr. Allen, other members of Team PRiME enlisted family members to join them in the event, asking partners and children to participate. Wei Ye, a laboratory technician in the Sidhu lab, Faculty of Medicine, ran with her husband. Wei has previously participated in charity runs and looked forward to training for the event during COVID-19. David Philpott, a graduate student in the Kelley lab, and member of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, also took advantage of the run date and joined the team for 10K when his marathon scheduled for Sept 20th was cancelled.
For team members Amanda Clifford and Christine Misquitta, the motivation for participating in the Terry Fox run was more personal and provided an opportunity to raise money for cancer research. In addition to being involved in diagnostic and therapeutic research at UofT, the disease has also directly impacted their family members. Christine’s father is fighting a 5 year battle with stage 4 renal carcinoma and Amanda’s brother is an Ewing’s Sarcoma survivor, a cancer in the same family as Terry’s.
Regardless of the motivation and the distance, PRiME trainees, faculty, and friends participated in the Terry Fox Run in their own way and surpassed the Team PRiME goal of $2000 thanks to generous supporters. A big thank you to all who donated and we hope to see you all in person next year!
For anyone interested, donations can still be made.
