Remembering the complicated legacy of Steve Fonyo, the 'other Terry Fox'

This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.

This week marks the 42nd anniversary of the start of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. On April 12, 1980, the 21-year-old Canadian dipped his prosthetic right leg into the Atlantic Ocean near St. John's, Newfoundland and headed west, determined to run the entire 8,000 or so kilometres to the shores of Victoria, British Columbia to raise money for cancer research.

Fox never made it to the Pacific. After running the equivalent of close to a marathon a day for 143 straight days, his journey ended at about the 5,400-km mark, near Thunder Bay, Ont., when the cancer that had cost him his leg spread to his lungs. He died 10 months later. But his unfathomable courage and determination live on in Canadian lore, and more than $800 million has been raised for cancer research in his name through the annual Terry Fox Run.

Everybody in Canada has heard that story. But did you know that, just a few years after Fox's Marathon of Hope, another young Canadian who'd lost a leg to cancer also set out to run across the country to raise money for cancer research — and made it all the way?

Steve Fonyo lost his left leg to cancer when he was 12. At just 19, he was named a Member of the Order of Canada after completing his 425-day, coast-to-coast run by dunking his prosthetic into the Pacific Ocean in May 1985. In the process, he raised millions of dollars for cancer research. So how come everyone knows the Terry Fox story, and yet so few have heard of Steve Fonyo?

Like the man himself, it's complicated. One reason for Fonyo's relative obscurity is that, even at the time of his journey, he just didn't