Terry Fox Heritage Minutes director did Canadawide search for amputee actor
Gardener from Vancouver Island was cast for the role
Grant Harvey says casting the right actor to play the role of Terry Fox in the latest Heritage Minutes clip was no easy task.
It wasn't because the Calgary-born director couldn't find a handsome, curly-headed young man to play the role. Those are a dime a dozen.
It was finding a handsome, curly-headed young man without a right leg that proved to be much more difficult.
"We didn't want to use CGI [special effects] or anything for the prosthetic leg, so we had to find somebody that, you know, was the right age, had the right body shape and had an amputation similar to Terry's."
Harvey put the word out with ACTRA and agents across the country.
Ultimately, it was a company that makes prosthetics that connected him with a gardener on Vancouver Island who had zero acting experience.
"He had to practice with the vintage prosthetic leg and really get the gait down and the mannerisms of the body language. It was challenging for everyone, for sure."
Mixing old footage with new reel, the Terry Fox Heritage Minutes clip marks the 35th anniversary of the Marathon of Hope.
In April of 1980, the 21-year-old began his epic journey across Canada to raise $1 million for cancer research. Setting off in St. John's, Nfld., Fox ran the equivalent of a marathon every single day.
But his marathon was cut short outside Thunder Bay when his cancer spread to his lungs.
Terry Fox died nine months later, but his legacy has lived on ever since through the annual Terry Fox Run and National School Run Day.
Harvey says because most Canadians know the Terry Fox legacy inside-out, he tried taking a different storytelling approach in the one-minute video vignette.
"We really wanted to make it more about what he felt when he was by himself — this kid — running across the country," he said.
"Canada has sort of made him into a hero, which is deserved, but ultimately he was just a 20-year-old kid that had a whole life in front of him that was robbed from him. And that really stuck with me."
The annual Terry Fox Run takes place on Sept. 20 in cities and towns across Canada and the annual school run will be held on Sept. 30.
